Record-sized great white shark moves into popular tourist area, experts urge caution

The largest great white shark ever tracked in the Atlantic has been spotted near popular beaches.

As Steven Spielberg's Jaws celebrates its 50th anniversary and makes its grand return to our screens, a huge great white shark has just appeared off the coast of America. First spotted in January 2025 off the coast of Florida, it made a disturbing appearance this June near a popular holiday destination.

4.20 meters long and weighing an estimated 750 kilos, this gigantic male shark is being closely monitored by researchers from the OCEARCH organization, who first spotted it off the coast of Jacksonville and named it "Contender." This is the first time in history that a shark of this size has been tagged in the Northwest Atlantic. Indeed, adult males typically measure between 3.4 and 4 meters.

This migrating marine behemoth has been traveling along the U.S. East Coast since January, expected to reach its northern summer feeding grounds around Cape Cod, Massachusetts, or Nova Scotia, Canada. But it has decided otherwise: according to the latest information released by scientists, the 30-year-old great white shark was spotted this June in Pamlico Sound, North Carolina, a large coastal lagoon located behind the Outer Banks.

These barrier islands are extremely popular in the United States and are heavily visited in the summer by tourists, most of whom have watched the hit Netflix series "Outer Banks," and families for their miles of sandy beaches and the practice of numerous water activities such as kitesurfing and kayaking.

Faced with the potential threat, scientists have just issued a warning. The risk of it approaching a beach is low, but very real , warned John Tyminski, data specialist at OCEARCH, to The Mirror. Great white sharks like Contender follow their natural prey: schooling fish, seals, etc. And if conditions bring these food sources close to beaches, it can attract predators nearby to take advantage of them .

While the tag can track the shark's path, it can only be intermittent, as its position can only be recorded when it comes to the surface. We advise swimmers to adopt a common-sense approach when swimming , the scientist insisted.

Faced with this threat and while the film Jaws continues to engrave a terrifying image of the great white shark in people's minds, it is worth remembering that the species, while certainly dangerous, is not fond of human flesh and that its population is threatened, having declined by 75% since the beginning of the century.