Contender, the largest male great whiteshark ever recorded in the Atlantic, is on the move again following his latest location ping in the Outer Banks in April.
Weighing in at almost 1,700 pounds and measuring nearly 14 feet, his latest Z-ping went off on Thursday, June 25, according to OCEARCH’s global shark tracker.
First tagged in January 2025 off the Florida-Georgia coast, he has continued providing real-time data that supports migration research and helps advance future ocean conservation efforts.
According to OCEARCH, when a shark is tagged, a SPOT satellite tag is attached to its dorsal fin.
The device utilizes two copper contacts that form a closed circuit underwater.
When the shark breaks the surface, the circuit is broken, which “wakes up” the tag to transmit a location signal.
“If the shark stays at the surface for 10, 20, 30 seconds, we’ll get a good fix on where the shark is,” OCEARCH Chief Scientist Dr. Robert Hueter said.
However, if it is only a quick, transient transmission, it is classified as a Z-ping.
This tells researchers that the shark surfaced, but the signal was too brief to calculate its coordinates.
“It’s really a miracle of science,” Hueter said.
Contender and other sharks and sea animals like him can be tracked in real-time using the free OCEARCH Global Shark Tracker app.