Another great white shark spotted off the NJ coast

It’s starting to get crowded out there: another white shark has been “pinged” off the coast of New Jersey.

As reported by TomsRiver.org, OCEARCH, the shark tagging organization, reported that Simon, a nine foot long juvenile, was spotted off the coast by Island Beach State Park on April 30.

Simon was pinged the next day near Long Branch before swimming toward New York.

Simon

According to OCEARCH,

Simon marks the 86th white shark sampled, tagged and released in our Western North Atlantic White Shark study and our 2nd during Expedition Southbound. He is named after St. Simon's Island, an island in Georgia, near where we met him.

Simon made his appearance a little over a week after Hali, a 10 foot juvenile great white, was pinged off the coast at Atlantic City.

OCEARCH is a non-profit organization that is dedicated to studying and researching marine life, with a particular focus on large predatory sharks such as great whites, tiger sharks, and hammerheads. The organization was founded in 2007 by Chris Fischer, a former professional angler, and it uses a unique approach to study marine life.

Their research approach involves catching sharks and other marine animals, bringing them onto a custom-built research vessel, and then conducting a series of tests and measurements before releasing the animals back into the wild. The researchers on board the vessel use a variety of tools and techniques to study the animals, including taking blood samples, tagging the animals with satellite tags, and fitting them with acoustic transmitters to track their movements.

When a shark comes close to the surface, their transponder “pings,” and the shark’s location is transmitted.

Some of the other tagged sharks:

Penny

Umi

Ocracoke

Miss Costa

Jekyll

Many of these sharks will swim by the Jersey coast over the next few months.

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