2000lb Great White Shark Passes By Again
Lydia — a 2000lb 14ft 6in great white shark — recently passed in the vicinity of Bermuda, according to a tracking system run by the non-profit organization ocean research group OCEARCH.
Lydia, who has passed by Bermuda’s waters before, traveled from the east coast of the USA, making her way to the general outskirts of Bermuda’s waters, before making a northerly turn. She has traveled approximately 840 miles in the past 19 days, including a spurt which saw her move some 210 miles in only 72 hours.
Lydia’s recent travels according to the tracking website:
Lydia was traveling in a easterly direction until she veered off recently to head northeast and Peter Gaube, a postdoctoral fellow at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, suggested this could be due to a region populated with large Gulf Stream eddies.
In a post on his blog, Mr Gaube said, “There has been lots of excitement recently about Lydia, an approximately 2,000 lbs. white shark, and her recent eastward movement offshore towards a region populated with large Gulf Stream eddies.
File photo of Lydia courtesy of OCEARCH:
“Until yesterday, Lydia was moving mostly due east. But now, she has taken a sudden turn north. To investigate if her change in course could be cued by the presence of a particular eddy, I overlaid her track on a map of near-real time SSH.
“Sure enough, her turn to the north puts her in the region of a large anticyclonic [clockwise rotation] eddy or meander, characterized by warm water low in chlorophyll [algae],” added Mr Gaube.
Video of Lydia being tagged:
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Category: All, Environment, News
Would you please mind explaining further why Lydia would want to swim in those waters that have the eddy? Presumably warmer water is more likely to contain food, and lower algae content is better for her gills and vision? (Complete guesses here)
Nah, that’s the whale who ate the shark who passed by…..
Most whales large enough to eat anything that size primarily feed on plankton and krill.
She’s plotting her course for Gold Cup.
If she’s arrived a week earlier she could have run in #33. HA!
Cold core rings are upwelling areas that would attract lots of predatory fishes. There are three big ones in the general area she is poking around today. You can see them at earth.nullschool.net
I think that’s just modeled surface wind data, using moderately (but not always) recent actuals.
click on the word “earth” – and a window forms that you can use to select ‘ocean’, then pick currents
Very cool.
It’s weird though, if you go to the global tracking site there are no sharks being tracked around Australia. Surely that’s the place to find a bunch of big great whites to track?
Long as it don’t come to Bermuda. We good
probably came by to pay her respect to Dr neil and off my topic but if she was 2000lbs when tagged y are they still like ohh 2000lb great white she gona be a bit bigger now right lol jus sayin could be 2500 maby even 3000 by now
We have a few politicians that are due for a swim! Cool their heads off!!
Ya that’s why I don’t like zoos.