Great white sharks are clustering off North Carolina on their way to warmer waters

Colder temperatures in the Northwest Atlantic are pushing large great white sharks toward the Carolinas and it’s starting to get crowded, according to satellite tracking.

There are currently nine tagged white sharks lingering off North Carolina ... 10 if you want to include a 13-foot shark far off the coast. Three more are parked off South Carolina beaches, tracking shows.

Experts believe they represent a fraction of the hundreds of white sharks likely prowling just off the state’s beaches.

Among the most famous is a 17.2-foot, 3,541 pound shark off Morehead City, OCEARCH says. Named Nukumi, the 50-year-old female is considered the biggest great white shark ever tagged by OCEARCH in the Northwest Atlantic.

She has been living off the Outer Banks for more than a month, data shows.

OCEARCH, a nonprofit shark research agency, says tracking has revealed white sharks regularly travel down the East Coast this time of year and often end up in the Gulf of Mexico. They typically stick close to the coast, where Gulf Stream “up welling” attracts the fish sharks love to feast on, experts say.

The tracking program is part of a larger effort to learn where great white sharks mate and nurse their pups along the coast, OCEARCH says.

This story was originally published December 11, 2020 at 11:08 AM with the headline "Great white sharks are clustering off North Carolina on their way to warmer waters."