On Jan. 31, Savannah, a 460-pound immature great white, “pinged” about 40 miles offshore of the Crystal River area in the Gulf.
PANAMA CITY — What do an 8-foot great white shark named Savannah and a snowbird from Nova Scotia have in common?
They both think the Gulf of Mexico is a better place to spend the winter than Canada.
While great white sharks are considered relatively rare in the Gulf of Mexico, Ocearch, a nonprofit focused on shark conservancy, tracked one of its tagged great whites into the Gulf of Mexico this past week.
On Jan. 31, Savannah, a 460-pound immature great white, “pinged” about 40 miles offshore of the Crystal River area in the Gulf. A ping is when the shark surfaces long enough for the tag to send a signal to a satellite.
Since Savannah was tagged on Hilton Head, South Carolina, in March 2017, she’s covered more than 4,000 miles. Ocearch records show from South Carolina, she went up to Nova Scotia, where she stayed from about August 2017 through November. After that she swam back South, spending some time back in the South Carolina area around December before making her way around the Florida peninsula.
Great white sharks are more common in cooler waters, but according to a Northwest Florida Daily News article in May 2016, there are usually at least one or two sightings in the Gulf of Mexico and the frequency does seem to be increasing.
Two other tagged great white sharks, George and Miss Costa, have pinged off of Southern Florida in the last 30 days.