Unusual companionship between pair of great white sharks baffles experts: ‘Seem to be buddies’
They’re no lone sharks.
A pair of great white sharks have seemingly become travel companions — swimming some 4,000 miles up from the Georgia coast to Nova Scotia together — in what one aquatic expert described as “groundbreaking.”
The marine beasts, named Simon and Jekyll, “seem to be buddies” and could even be biological bros, OCEARCH scientist Dr. Bob Hueter said in a video posted online.
Great whites, also known as just white sharks, are generally believed to be solitary creatures, according to the chief scientist at the marine research nonprofit.
The male sharks were each captured and fitted with a tracking device by OCEARCH off Georgia just five days apart in December and after they were released, they’ve been traveling along the same route at the same time, Hueter told the Museum of Science in the clip.
The duo’s last pinged location was in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, according to the OCEARCH shark tracker.
“We’ve never seen anything quite like this before,” said Hueter who has been studying shark behavior since the 1970s.
OCEARCH is now testing DNA samples that its researchers collected when they captured and tagged the great whites to determine if Simon and Jekyll could be brothers or half-brothers moving along the same path.
Simon and Jekyll are both juvenile male sharks and were tagged off St. Simon’s Island on Dec. 4 and Jekyll Island on Dec. 9 respectively. Simon weighs 434 pounds and measures 9-foot-6, while Jekyll checks in at 395 pounds and 8-foot-8, according to OCEARCH, based in Utah.
Sharks have been observed spending time together to mate or even hunt, but according to Hueter, they migrate alone.
However, Simon and Jekyll have stayed within 10 to 100 miles of one another on their trip up north, he told the Washington Post.
Hueter doesn’t currently have an explanation for the unusual social behavior of the shark friends, but he described the discovery as a potential breakthrough in shark research and awareness.
“In a way, it’s humanizing,” he told the New York Times, adding that it’s a reminder that “they have siblings. They have a mother. They have a father.”
“They’re just trying to make a living in the ocean,” he said. “And we need them for the balance of life in the sea.”