Two great white sharks are confusing experts by sticking together. Usually solitary creatures, these two males have been tagged and recorded migrating as a pair.
The Boston Museum of Science posted about the odd couple on Aug. 6 and asked, “What happens when two white sharks become best friends?”
What happens when two white sharks become best friends?
— Museum of Science (@museumofscience) August 6, 2023
Meet Simon and Jekyll, the dynamic duo challenging everything we thought we knew about these solitary creatures. @Ocearch has tagged both of these apex predators and have noticed they’ve moved together up the Atlantic coast… pic.twitter.com/kvw2ip314r
They also noted these sharks are “challenging everything we thought we knew.”
The pair, named Simon and Jekyll, are being studied after scientists tagged them last December, per the Washington Post.
A Utah-based non-profit, dedicated to studying marine life called OCEARCH, made the discovery. They caught and tagged the sharks off the coast of Georgia within five days of each other.
Simon was found near St. Simon’s island, and Jekyll was caught near Jekyll Island. The sharks are both between 10-and-15-year-old males.
It was discovered by April that the sharks had found each other and were traveling up the Atlantic coast. They traveled within 10 to 100 miles of each other through Ocracoke, N.C., Virginia Beach, and Atlantic City.
By July 4, they had gotten near the southern coast of Nova Scotia together. They journeyed past Halifax, around the Gulf of Saint Lawrence, and then reached Quebec’s eastern coast.
Their last known destination point was recorded on Aug. 11. The pair was off the northeast coast of the province of New Brunswick.
The chief scientist at OCEARCH, Robert Hueter, said, “Social behavior in sharks is something that’s not particularly well-known.”
“And it’s not thought to be something that they have much of, except in maybe isolated cases of certain species,” he added.
He also noted they are testing blood samples to determine whether Simon and Jekyll are brothers.
He did state white sharks “were already more complex than we used to think they were.”
If this pair turns out to be related, it would change the way experts view the species.
Hueter said, “Now this adds a whole new element of sort of a familial and social component to migration.”