An Atlantic Journey: One White Shark, Two Encounters, Hundreds of Miles Apart
By Chester Moore
A few seconds of footage can reveal a lot about a great white shark.
Dr. Megan Winton, chief scientist of the Atlantic White Shark Conservancy (AWSC), was conducting research off Cape Cod with Dr. Greg Skomal of the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries when a great white appeared below.
The shark kept its distance, but the team captured footage that would prove far more interesting when they got back on land. While reviewing it the following day, Winton noticed something important: The shark was carrying a SPOT tag.
That narrowed the possibilities, but it didn't end the detective work. They compared the footage with images of individually identified sharks in the AWSC White Shark Catalog, looking at the animal's markings and other distinguishing features.
Then the pieces came together. The shark was Freeman.
Freeman.
Months earlier and hundreds of miles away, Winton had tagged the young female great white off South Carolina with the help of Chip Michalove of Outcast Sport Fishing. Winton had also photographed and filmed Freeman's individual markings and added her to the White Shark Catalog.
"We didn't actually realize it until we got back in and were processing videos the next day," Winton said.
For Winton, however, seeing Freeman again was particularly special.
"It's been the highlight of my season up here so far," Winton said.
Freeman's SPOT tag had transmitted from Cape Cod Bay a few weeks earlier, so Winton knew the shark had made it north and had even hoped she might somehow get the chance to see her. Knowing a great white is somewhere in the region, however, and actually crossing paths with that same animal hundreds of miles from where you first encountered it are two very different things.
"I don't know how many people can say they've seen the same white shark in multiple places along their migration," Winton said.
Researchers who spend years studying great whites can encounter the same individual repeatedly in a particular area. Seeing Freeman at two widely separated points along her migration was something else.
"Plenty of us, you know, can say we've seen the same one year after year and over and over in the same place, but to see one in two different seasons hundreds of miles apart is pretty wild," Winton said.
Freeman's story is a remarkable reunion, but it is also an example of something much bigger: the value of knowing these sharks as individuals.
Knowing the Sharks
When Winton worked with Freeman in South Carolina, the photographs and video she collected weren't simply keepsakes from an exciting day on the water. They had a purpose.
"I took photographs and videos of all of her markings to add her to the catalog, which is why we do that," Winton said. "So, we can tell who it is when we see it."
Electronic tagging has given researchers extraordinary tools for studying shark movements, but photo identification provides another way to follow individual animals. Great whites have visible characteristics that distinguish one shark from another, allowing researchers to compare new images with sharks they already know.
The White Shark Catalog brings those individual records together, and the public can explore that work through AWSC's White Shark Logbook. The Logbook lets people see individually identified sharks and the identification work that helps researchers piece together their histories.
There is something powerful about that approach. A great white moving through the Atlantic is no longer simply another member of the species. Once researchers can recognize that shark, otherwise isolated encounters may begin to form the story of an individual animal.
Freeman is an extraordinary example of what that can look like. But Winton pointed to another shark to show that even a single set of images from elsewhere in the range can deliver valuable information.
Why the Images Matter
Years ago, Michalove sent Winton footage of a great white off South Carolina. She recognized the shark as an individual researchers had previously documented off Cape Cod but hadn't seen there in years. His nickname was Mushroom.
The images provided more than another sighting. Winton could see that Mushroom had grown considerably and was maturing.
“And he had grown a lot, and his claspers had grown a lot, so he was maturing. And yeah, you know, if we weren't cataloging and identifying these things, we never would have known,” Winton said.
That's the larger point. Mushroom shows how images of a white shark captured in one part of its range can provide useful information when researchers can match that animal with photographs already in the catalog.
That same principle is what makes images captured by fishermen, boaters and divers potentially valuable.
Connecting Sharks Across Their Range
South Carolina has become an important part of this wider effort through AWSC's work with Michalove.
Michalove said he began to recognize the potential value of those encounters when he realized how little information researchers were getting about white sharks from South Carolina. Adding to that expanding body of knowledge has become an unexpected reward.
"It's great, you know? It's a good bonus," Michalove said.
He also spoke warmly about the relationship that has developed through working with researchers.
"It's obviously great for both of us," Michalove said.
Freeman is the extraordinary example of where partnership and identification can lead. Winton helped tag and document her in South Carolina and then encountered that same individual months later and hundreds of miles away off Cape Cod.
But the larger lesson doesn't require an encounter as remarkable as Freeman's. Useful information about an individual shark can come from something as simple as an image captured elsewhere in its range.
Your Shark Images Could Matter
A photograph or a few seconds of video could provide researchers with another piece of a great white shark's story.
When asked what could best help AWSC and its research, Winton immediately turned the conversation toward people who capture images of great whites far from Cape Cod.
"If they get video footage or photos of a white shark somewhere, you know, within the northwestern Atlantic population's range, to submit it to us because these things travel thousands of miles every year," Winton said.
This isn't simply a possibility. It has already happened.
"We have identified sharks that divers and boaters have gotten footage of off of Florida," Winton said. "We've recognized them as sharks we've seen off of Massachusetts before or Canada before."
Think about what that means. Someone capturing images of a great white hundreds or even thousands of miles from Cape Cod may have no idea the animal in front of the camera already has a history with researchers. It might have been photographed years earlier. It might be an animal they haven't seen in a long time. The images might even reveal how the shark has grown or changed since its last documented appearance.
"Somebody who's down in your neck of the woods might not think it's relevant," Winton said. "Like if they see a white shark down there, they might be like, well, it won't be in these guys' catalog, but they're all part of that same population."
That message extends throughout the sharks' Northwest Atlantic range, including Florida and the Gulf of Mexico. The fisherman, diver, or boater who captures the images doesn't have to recognize the shark. That's the value of getting those images into the hands of researchers who might.
Sharktivity and Citizen Science
AWSC has created ways for the public to contribute observations and images. Sharktivity provides information about white shark sightings and detections, while images captured by the public can contribute to the broader identification effort through the White Shark Logbook.
That connection between public observations and the White Shark Catalog is important. No research team can be everywhere a great white travels. Fishermen, boaters, and divers, however, are spread across an enormous geographic area, and occasionally one of them will be in exactly the right place at the right time.
An image captured in one of those encounters may become more than a memory. If researchers are able to identify the shark, it can establish another point in the animal's history, reconnect them with an individual they haven't documented in years, or reveal changes in the shark itself.
That's what Winton wants people outside the traditional white shark research areas to understand. An image doesn't become irrelevant because it was captured far from Cape Cod. The distance may be exactly what makes it interesting.
Connecting an Ocean One Shark at a Time
Modern great white shark research involves remarkable technology. Satellite tags can reveal large-scale movements, acoustic receivers can record when tagged animals pass through particular areas, and cameras give researchers a view below the surface that previous generations of shark scientists could only have imagined.
But something beautifully simple lies at the heart of Freeman's story. Winton took the time to photograph and record the details that made Freeman an individual in South Carolina. Months later and hundreds of miles away, a camera captured a great white beneath a research boat off Cape Cod. Researchers noticed a tag, checked their records, and looked closely.
The shark wasn't simply another great white.
It was Freeman.
Enormous gaps will always remain in what humans know about animals capable of crossing huge expanses of ocean. No research team can be everywhere a great white travels, and no tag can tell the whole story of an animal. But thousands of people are on those waters every day, and many of them carry cameras.
Some will encounter great whites. Somewhere in the next photograph or a few seconds of video submitted from South Carolina, Florida, the Gulf of Mexico, or another part of the Northwest Atlantic could be a shark already known to science.
Freeman proves that the distance between two encounters may be measured in hundreds of miles. The White Shark Catalog shows that the link between them can sometimes be made with an image.
And that means the next person who helps scientists connect two distant points in the life of a great white shark might not be a scientist at all. They may simply be the person who captures an image—and unknowingly helps write the next chapter in the life story of a great white shark.
About the Author: Chester Moore is an award-winning wildlife journalist based on the Gulf Coast of Texas and founder of the Gulf Great White Shark Society. He has covered wildlife and conservation for more than three decades and has spent years documenting sharks in the Gulf of Mexico, with a particular focus on great white sharks in the Gulf and Northwest Atlantic.