A massive great white shark has resurfaced months after disappearing from researchers’ trackers.
The animal, named Ernst, measures 12 feet long and weighs 1,009 pounds. Its tracker pinged off Newfoundland, Canada, on Thursday after it traveled thousands of miles along the US East Coast.
Researchers with OCEARCH, a non-profit group focused on shark research and ocean conservation, tagged the female shark on October 4, 2025.
Tracking data show Ernst moving through the Gulf of Mexico and circling the waters around Florida, then pinging several times around Alabama in January, before beginning a lengthy journey north.
Researchers said the shark’s proximity to shore was notable and that it falls outside what they typically observe for white sharks in the region.
Its route took it past Georgia and the Carolinas, through waters off Virginia and New Jersey, and toward New England.
The shark then continued northeast past Nova Scotia before entering Canada’s Cabot Strait.
Its latest ping was recorded on July 23 off the southwestern coast of Newfoundland, near the Codroy Valley.
The animal, named Ernst, measures 12 feet long and weighs 1,009 pounds. Its tracker pinged off Newfoundland, Canada , on Thursday after it traveled thousands of miles along the US East Coast
White sharks migrate to the colder waters off Newfoundland and Atlantic Canada during the summer and fall in search of food, following gray and harbor seals into their northern feeding grounds.
As seal populations have recovered across the North Atlantic, the sharks have gained access to a growing supply of prey that helps them build the fat reserves needed for their lengthy migrations.
Tracking data suggest the predators are also spending increasingly longer periods in the region. Their average stay has reportedly risen from 48 to 70 days, with some traveling as far north as the Grand Banks and Cabot Strait.
As ocean temperatures fall during the winter, the sharks typically head south toward the southeastern US and the Gulf of Mexico in search of warmer waters and other food sources.
Ernst is one of several sharks helping researchers understand migration patterns in the Northwest Atlantic. These northern pings are normal seasonal behavior and part of ongoing monitoring efforts.
During the winter, the shark’s tracker registered 22 detections off southwest Florida before recording additional signals near Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana.
At one point, the animal came within approximately four miles of the Alabama coast near Gulf Shores and Dauphin Island.
It was also detected around Louisiana’s Chandeleur Islands, giving researchers rare insight into this population’s movements through the northeastern Gulf.
Tracking data show Ernst moving through the Gulf of Mexico and circling the waters around Florida , then pinging several times around Alabama in January, before beginning a lengthy journey north
In April, one of the largest great white sharks ever observed in the Atlantic Ocean pinged along the US East Coast.
Nicknamed Contender, the male great white shark measures a whopping 13 feet and nine inches in length and weighs nearly 1,700 pounds.
OCEARCH said that the massive predator reemerged from the ocean on July 10, when Contender’s tracking tag briefly reactivated somewhere near the East Coast.
Researchers originally encountered Contender on January 17, 2025, just 45 miles from the Florida-Georgia coast, and were able to attach a satellite tag to his dorsal fin, which sends location pings when he surfaces.
Contender (Pictured) is a massive white shark that has been tracked all around the US East Coast over the last year, reaching Canada’s Quebec in the north and Florida in the south
Since then, Contender has traveled thousands of miles, moving north along the coasts of North Carolina, New Jersey and Massachusetts’ Cape Cod as he migrated in search of food.
Until this month, however, the monster ocean predator had not been seen since late April 2026, when OCEARCH determined he had been in the waters near North Carolina.
The group revealed that Contender is the largest male white shark they have ever tagged among the North Atlantic population.
While scientists now know he is still out there, the latest signal left out a key piece of information, as the satellite data was unable to determine Contender’s exact location right now.
