Sharks back at Jersey Shore: OCEARCH-tagged great white shark Hali returns to New Jersey
The ocean's apex predators, the great white sharks, are on the move north and starting to appear off the New Jersey coast, according to OCEARCH's shark tracker.
One of the season's first arrivals is Hali, a juvenile great white or simply white shark, whose satellite tag "pinged" Friday when she was about 15 to 20 miles east of Long Beach Island. A ping occurs when the dorsal fin of the shark, where the tracking tag is placed, is above water for at least 90 seconds, which is long enough for the satellite to pick up its location.
Hali weighed almost 700 pounds and was slightly longer than 10 feet when she was tagged near Ironbound Island, Nova Scotia, on Sept. 12, 2021. She was the 75th white shark tagged by OCEARCH as part of its ongoing Northwest Atlantic White Shark study. She was named Hali for the people of Halifax, Nova Scotia.
She has traveled 7,687 miles since being tagged, including four trips past New Jersey. Last fall she pinged at the entrance to the Hudson Canyon, which starts about 90 miles off the coast here, as she swam south. She went as as far south as the Florida Keys for the winter. In April she was in South Carolina before making a B-line to New Jersey.
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Last summer she returned to Nova Scotia, so there is a good chance that is her ultimate destination this season.
OCEARCH, a nonprofit research group, has been tagging white sharks in the Atlantic Ocean for over a decade in order to collect data on the lifecycle of one of the ocean's apex predators.
Along with tagging the sharks, OCEARCH takes biological samples, such as blood and tissue, from the sharks before releasing them into the wild. The group says it uses that data to understand things such as genetics, infections in sharks and develop antibiotics for a shark bite.
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Hali is not the first OCEARCH-tagged shark to swim this far north so far this spring.
Breton, a 13-foot, 3-inch shark weighing nearly 1,500 pounds, was making its way north, according to tracker. However, Breton is taking a route very far offshore and was east of the continental slope when he last pinged on April 12. Breton has made several passes up and down the Atlantic Coast since being tagged of Canada in September. 2020. He has swam as far south as the Turks and Caicos Islands.
When Jersey Shore native Dan Radel is not reporting the news, you can find him in a college classroom where he is a history professor. Reach him @danielradelapp; 732-643-4072; dradel@gannettnj.com.
This article originally appeared on Asbury Park Press: OCEARCH-tagged great white shark Hali returns to New Jersey
