12-foot great white shark reaches Cape Hatteras, leading the pack as they swim south

A great white shark more than 12 feet long is hanging out off of North Carolina’s coast after a long swim from far northern waters.

Great whites that have spent the last few months in the area around Nova Scotia now are migrating south, and one of them is ahead of the pack, according to shark research and tracking group OCEARCH.

Jefferson, an adult great white is 12 feet, 7 inches long and was tagged off of Nova Scotia. He is named for Jefferson’s Bourbon, an OCEARCH partner.

It took Jefferson about 16 days to travel from Nova Scotia to the Carolina coast, according to OCEARCH’s tracker. Jefferson is one of the most recently tagged sharks from an expedition earlier this month.

In that time, Jefferson has traveled 736 miles, according to OCEARCH.

“Jefferson is wasting no time migrating south,” OCEARCH tweeted on Monday. “He has already reached Cape Hatteras, NC. His tracks are the farthest south of any white sharks on the tracker so far this season.”

The sharks are tracked by “pings.” When a tagged shark’s dorsal fin breaks the surface, it transmits a signal to a satellite, which then sends geographical data.

Jefferson, like other OCEARCH-tagged sharks, has his own Twitter account.

This story was originally published October 23, 2018 at 8:18 PM with the headline "12-foot great white shark reaches Cape Hatteras, leading the pack as they swim south."