Bob and Tancook — two great white sharks tagged with satellite tracking technology — paid a visit to Hampton Roads over the weekend.
Bob — a 13-foot, 1300-pound great white shark — sent a satellite ping 9:25 a.m. Sunday while off the coast of Virginia Beach. Tancook, who is nearing 10 feet in length and 715 pounds, followed behind Bob, pinging in almost the same location less than 12 hours later.
Both sharks were tagged by the Ocearch marine research organization, and pinged as they head south for the winter. A ping happens when the shark’s dorsal fin breaks the surface of the water.
Bob, who was named after Ocearch’s chief scientist, last surfaced Thursday, off the coast of Atlantic City, New Jersey. Before that, on Sept. 22, he was cruising the waters of Cape Cod, Massachusetts. Sunday marks Bob’s first visit to Hampton Roads.
Tancook, which means “facing the open sea” to the indigenous Mi’kmaq people of Nova Scotia, has been more of a wanderer, traveling to Virginian Beach from the Gulf of St. Lawrence, located off New Brunswick, Canada, in one month’s time. Tancook visited Hampton Roads waters the last week of October last year.
Ocearch, a nonprofit group doing research on large marine animals including great white sharks, launched its shark tracker app in 2012 to allow people to observe the movements of sharks around the world.
Bob was tagged by Ocearch on Sept. 20, 2021 in the waters of Nova Scotia. Tancook was tagged just two days later in the same area.
Based on Bob’s tracking history, he likes to spend his summers in New England before swimming to the warmer waters of north Florida, Georgia and South Carolina for the winter.
Tancook’s tracking history shows he travels from Nova Scotia late in the summer all the way past Cape Canaveral, Florida, which is where he spent last Christmas.
While their exact ages are unknown, Bob is estimated to be an adult and Tancook is considered a juvenile.
Expedition teams have tagged 84 great white sharks along the East Coast. At an estimated 50 years of age, Nukumi is believed to the oldest shark Ocearch is tracking. Nukumi, an adult female great white shark, pinged just off the Outer Banks several times from November 2020 to February 2021 before disappearing beneath the surface in April 2021.
Caitlyn Burchett, caitlyn.burchett@virginiamedia.