Trackers see great white shark in Long Island Sound for first time
By Nicholas Sakelaris
May 22, 2019, 11:30:54 AM EDT
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In a circumstance similar to the iconic film Jaws, a great white shark -- one of the most predatory types in the world -- has been detected for the first time in an estuary on the Northeast U.S. coast.
Officials said the carcharodon carcharias was spotted in Long Island Sound off the Connecticut coast. The 10-foot male shark was tagged off the coast of Nova Scotia last year and tracked with a digital monitor. Scientists named it Cabot, after explorer John Cabot, and gave him his own Twitter account.
Experts say it's highly unusual for a great white to be in Long Island Sound. The same shark was tracked in South Carolina and North Carolina in April and in Delaware Bay last week. He's traveled as far south as Florida.
It's unclear whether Cabot was still on the north side of Long Island or had gone to the south side. The sound lies between Connecticut and Long Island, N.Y.
Hello everyone,
— Great White Shark Cabot (@GWSharkCabot) May 20, 2019
I just wanted to give a big thank you to all of you amazing humans. Today has been a spectacular day for me and @OCEARCH and I couldn’t be more grateful for the support many of you have shown! pic.twitter.com/0C262FRsCI
"New detections, we are trying make sense of, show him on the south side of Long Island," a Ocearch spokesperson said. "This new information has us digging deeper in an effort to understand exactly where Cabot is."
RELATED: Female sand tiger sharks visit the same shipwrecks off North Carolina coast
"The [Long Island] Sound is cleaner, healthier than it's been in so many years," said Dave Sigworth, a spokesman for the Maritime Aquarium in Norwalk, Conn. "So we are going to start to see occasional large apex animals, like humpback whales."
Experts said it's more common to see blue sharks and hammerheads in the area. Great whites have likely started slipping into the Sound unnoticed.
"The last thing we want is for everybody to jump in a boat to try and find him," Sigworth said. "Leave him alone."
RELATED: Surfers rescue baby great white shark in South Africa
The great white is the same type of shark portrayed in the 1975 blockbuster movie Jaws. In that film, the shark also swam up from southern waters to the New England area.
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