A female great white shark called Miss Costa is located in the waters off the Gulf Coast, according to its tracking device.
The tracker of the 1,688-pound shark "pinged" near the Big Bend area of the Gulf of Mexico, revealed Ocearch, an international great white shark research organization. Miss Costa is cruising off the coast of the Florida Panhandle, south of Panama City.
Ocearch placed the tracker on Miss Costa. Pings are generated when a shark's tagged dorsal fin breaks the surface of the water, prompting the tracker to transmits a signal to an overhead satellite. The organization is live tracking great white sharks and other marine animals on its website.
White great white sharks are known to occasionally swim in the Gulf, they don't typically go near enough to the surface to signal one of those pings.
Travels Of Miss Costa
Ocearch researchers originally pinged Miss Costa in Nantucket, Massachusetts on Sept. 23, 2016. At the time, the adult female shark was 12 foot, 5 inches long, but it is now estimated to be as long as 14 or 15 feet. The great white shark traveled nearly 12,400 miles in the past 103 days.
"As @MissCostaShark pings near the Florida Panhandle, she's helping give a better understanding of white shark behavior in the Gulf of Mexico," Ocearch tweeted.
Miss Costa first pinged this year in the Gulf of Mexico in mid-March and has been working her way steadily north ever since. According to Ocearch, Miss Costa's trip to the Florida Panhandle is significant because the organization doesn't often track large white sharks that far north into the Gulf, especially big females.
"It's been known for a long time that white sharks visit the Gulf of Mexico, but the majority of their activity there remains a mystery since data sets on their movements in the region are lacking compared to other areas in the Northwest Atlantic," the organization said in a statement.
Ocearch maintains the Twitter account @MissCostaShark to share updates about the great white shark. It now has over 12,700 followers.
Aside from Miss Costa, there were other 'celebrity' great white sharks that graced the Panhandle in recent years. Hilton, a 1,326-pound male white shark was located in the Gulf of Mexico just south of Navarre in late April 2018, and Savannah, an 8-foot-6-inch, 460-pound female shark, had circled the Florida peninsula in January 2018 before she entered the Gulf.
Tracking Great White Sharks
Earlier this year, Ocearch also tracked white sharks Nova and Cabot into the Gulf with their tracks pinned near the Florida Keys. Reports last February also indicate the fishermen on a pier in Pensacola, Florida hooked a white shark.
Ocearch's tracking data of great white sharks show that the apex predators can be found in the Gulf of Mexico for at least six months each year. They arrive at the Gulf as early as December and as late as July. Most of the pings are over the continental shelf west of Florida.
Researchers are observing Miss Costa and other great white sharks to test a hypothesis regarding the migration patterns of adult female great whites in the Northwest Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico.
