Celebrated ‘dominant’ alligator dies after ruling Georgia swamp for nearly 80 years

An grizzled old alligator that was once royalty in Georgia’s Okefenokee Swamp Park has died — a conclusion reached after researchers found several of his vertebrae and a dormant GPS satellite tracker.

Georgia’s Coastal Ecology Lab announced the death of Okefenokee Joe in a Sept. 6 Facebook post that suggested he succumbed to old age.

Okefenokee Joe’s exact age wasn’t known, but it is suspected he had been roaming Georgia’s massive Okefenokee Swamp since World War II.

“It is very difficult to age an alligator and you can really only guess based on size and body condition. All we can really say is that he was a very old alligator, as he had scar tissue over both eyes and his scutes were worn almost smooth,” lab officials wrote in a Facebook comment. “Alligators can live to be approximately 80 years old though so it is possible he was close to that.”

“Okefenokee Joe” (also known as “Oke Joe”) was 11 feet, 5 inches long and weighed more than 400 pounds, making him the largest alligator tagged by the Coastal Ecology Lab in Okefenokee Swamp.

Lab officials began to suspect something was wrong in mid-July, when Joe’s satellite tracker tag went silent. At first, they thought the tag might have fallen off.

“If not for the satellite tag he was wearing we probably would have been left wondering where this animal had gone or if he was still alive,” lab officials wrote.

“Using the VHF (radio transmitter) we were eventually able to find the (satellite) tag and to our surprise, it still had the nuchal (neck) scutes attached to it. After a further search of the immediate vicinity, we also discovered several vertebrae confirming that Okefenokee Joe had indeed died.”

Joe was first captured and tagged at the front of Okefenokee Swamp Park “right next to the parking lot,” the lab reported in December.

Despite Joe’s old age and poor vision, tracking showed the former “dominant male” continued to roam the entire park, crawling up to 2 miles in 12 hours, the lab reported. He traveled “roughly 76 miles in a year” to patrol his territory in the swamp, tag data shows.

It’s believed Joe’s turf was taken over earlier this year by 11-foot, 1-inch Obadiah Barber, who counted as the “second-largest satellite-tagged alligator,” according to a January Facebook post.

This story was originally published September 8, 2021 at 1:44 PM with the headline "Celebrated ‘dominant’ alligator dies after ruling Georgia swamp for nearly 80 years."