South Carolina

Massive 1,189-pound great white shark spotted along SC coast. See for yourself

An image of a great white shark.
An image of a great white shark. Getty Images

A huge great white shark has been enjoying South Carolina waters this week.

The shark, named Ironbound, is a 12-foot-4-inch-long male that weighs 1,189 pounds, was pinged swimming up the South Carolina coastline on Thursday, according to OCEARCH. To view the tracking of Ironbound or other sharks by OCEARCH, click here.

The research group first tagged the shark in 2019 near Lunenburg, Nova Scotia.

Ironbound is named after West Ironbound Island near Lunenburg. He is the 53rd great white shark tagged by OCEARCH in the northwest Atlantic Ocean.

Through the tagging of great whites, OCEARCH has shown the predators make “predictable annual migrations between the northern and southern parts of their range, which stretches from Newfoundland to the eastern Gulf of Mexico,” according to an OCEARCH report. “The sharks spend summer and fall primarily in coastal waters off New England and Atlantic Canada, feeding on high-calorie prey such as seals, before heading back south to warmer winter waters off the southeast U.S. from South Carolina to the Gulf of Mexico.

This story was originally published May 19, 2023 at 9:18 AM with the headline "Massive 1,189-pound great white shark spotted along SC coast. See for yourself."

Patrick McCreless
The State
Patrick McCreless is the Southeast service journalism editor for McClatchy, who leads and edits a team of six reporters in South Carolina, Georgia and Mississippi. The team writes about trending news of the day and topics that help readers in their daily lives and better informs them about their communities. He attended Jacksonville State University in Alabama and grew up in Tuscaloosa, AL.
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