🦈 Breton
Great white shark · The western North Atlantic - tagged off Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, and wintering off Florida and Georgia
Lives in Lagoon
Breton was the first white shark tagged on OCEARCH's Expedition Nova Scotia in September 2020, and is named for Cape Breton where the crew found him. In 2022 somebody joined up his accumulated satellite pings and the track drew a recognisable outline of a shark - tail in Nova Scotia, body down the eastern seaboard, nose pointing at Florida - and he went viral as the great white who drew his own self-portrait. He is a 13-foot, roughly 1,400-pound adult male and he is still pinging.
What they do
Cruises just under the surface, lifts his tagged dorsal fin clear of the water so the satellite catches it, holds it up for a beat, then rolls and drops away..
A 1,400-pound commuter with a perfect attendance record and a flair for accidental art.
Lore
- ★The self-portrait was made by his pings between September 2020 and January 2022 - the tail in Nova Scotia, the head aimed at Florida's east coast.
- ★His tag pings only when his dorsal fin breaks the surface, so his track is a record of every time he surfaced, not every mile he swam.
- ★He has logged more than 41,000 miles since being tagged in September 2020.
- ★In one January 2025 day he surfaced four times off Daytona Beach, then covered around 139 miles in the next 72 hours.
Helping the real one
💛 Support Breton via OCEARCHOCEARCH tags and tracks Breton and publishes his pings on their public tracker; this link resolves to their live "Support Our Sharks. Support Our Oceans" donation page. This opens their own official page. Money never touches this site.
Where this comes from
- Fox News 1,400-pound great white Breton pings off Florida beach four times in one day ↗
- CBS News New York Breton the great white shark pings off New Jersey ↗
Every link here was checked twice before it was published. If one is dead or wrong, tell us.