Researchers tracked a giant great white shark swimming off the coast of Mississippi on Friday, January 30, just weeks after the animal surfaced off the coast of Alabama.
The 12-foot-long, 1,009-pound shark had been swimming south of Horn Island this week, according to OCEARCH, a nonprofit organization that tags and tracks sharks.
The shark, which researchers named Ernst, surfaced again in the early morning hours of Friday, January 24 and January 30. Researchers tracked Ernst on Jan. 11 just 4 miles off the Alabama coastline, near Dauphin Island, before heading to Mississippi.
Ernst was a 1,009-pound great white shark that was discovered in January 2026 off the Mississippi-Alabama coastline.
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Ernst arrived in the waters off Mississippi and Alabama after a long journey along the Mississippi and Alabama coastlines. She was tagged in Nova Scotia last October, swam up the Atlantic coast, around the Florida peninsula, and reached the Gulf of Mexico in November.
Researchers said earlier this month that it’s not common for great white sharks to swim as close to shore as Ernst did in Alabama. Great white sharks prefer water temperatures of 50 to 80 degrees, and young sharks often stay in warmer waters closer to shore.
A screenshot from the OCEARCH website shows Ernst’s travels this month near the Mississippi and Alabama coastlines.
But when researchers tagged Ernst last October, she was already approaching adulthood. Ernst returned to deeper water this week, according to his trackers. Researchers captured her position as the tag on her dorsal fin emerged from the water.
The researchers named it after Ernst in honor of a ferry named William G. Ernst that for decades connected rural communities on two Nova Scotia islands to the mainland.
Her arrival near the Mississippi-Alabama coastline is the latest of several shark visits in recent years.
Last September, OCEARCH tracked a giant pregnant tiger shark named Hannah off the Mississippi coast. In 2024, a great white shark named Keji was also spotted south of the Mississippi coast.
— This article was originally published on sunherald.com and is republished here with permission from The Herald Sun.
This article originally appeared in the Mississippi Bugle Chronicle: Great white shark Ernst makes noise in waters off Mississippi coast
