Great white sharks called Simon and Jekyll have made FRIENDS with each other and are swimming up the East Coast together, scientists believe
- Great whites Simon and Jekyll have stumped scientists tracking them after travelling the east coast of the country together
- The two sharks, who are known as being solitary animals, have not drifted further than 100 miles from each since their travels last December
- They are currently situated in the Gulf of St. Lawrence in Canada, according to recent tracking data
Two great white sharks have been tracked swimming together for 4,000 miles along the Atlantic coast.
The duo, named Simon and Jekyll, had both been tagged by marine biologists with OCEARCH in December of last year and have since remained close together.
Being tracked by satellites, the pair are currently situated in the Gulf of St. Lawrence in water off New Brunswick, Canada.
The pair had travelled all the way to the area after initially pinging their location from Georgia.
Typically solitary creatures, chief scientist at OCEARCH Robert Hueter told The Washington Post he had never seen great white sharks behave this way.
They are currently situated in the Gulf of St. Lawrence in Canada, according to recent tracking data
Simon has been most recently tracked just last Friday near the Gulf of St. Lawrence in Canada
Simon, pictured here, weighed in at 434 lbs when he was originally tagged and measured 9 ft 6 in
Heuter told the outlet: ‘White sharks were already more complex than we used to think they were.
‘Now this adds a whole new element of sort of a familial and social component to migration.’
According to h, 71, he is also now awaiting blood results to see if the two are related.
Simon last pinged his last location on August 11, while Jekyll has not pinged his since July 18.
The two had started swimming up past North Carolina at similar times in April, with Heuter saying they had stayed between 10 and 100 miles of each other.
Simon is a juvenile male, and when he was tagged weighed 434 lbs and measured 9 ft 6 in.
Jekyll is also a juvenile male and weighed in at 395 lbs when tagged, measuring 8 ft 8 in.
Their locations are collected when the tags they are wearing breach the surface of the ocean.
In this image of Jekyll, shared by OCEARCH, is shown – weighing 395 lbs and measuring 8 ft 8 in
Jekyll last pinged his location on July 18 in the same area as his new found friend Simon
Heuter said that sharks sometimes spend time together to ate and eat but typically migrate alone.
He continued: ‘Social behavior in sharks is something that’s not particularly well-known.
‘And it’s not thought to be something that they have much of, except in maybe isolated cases of certain species.’
Ocearch is a nonprofit organization that is dedicated to studying and conserving sharks. The organization has tagged over 90 sharks.
It comes after a landmark study found that Cape Cod had become a great white shark hotspot.
A study which monitored the coastline from 2015 to 2018 found that a staggering 800 individual great white sharks had visited the waters.
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