GREAT WHITE SIGHT

Juvenile White Shark Spotted Off Duck Key

ALEX RICKERT alex@keysweekly.com

Bulls, hammerheads and reef sharks are common culprits known to fishermen trying to reel their catches past the “tax men” in the Florida Keys.

A great white? Not so much.

Mikki McComb-Kobza, executive director of the Ocean First Institute with a shark lab in Key Largo, was surprised to receive a call from College of the Florida Keys student Travis Ellington. Sending over a bevy of photos and videos, Ellington reported a juvenile white shark hanging out off the stern of family friend Tom Eacobacci’s boat while fishing off Duck Key on Jan. 21.

“He was just losing his mind,” said McComb-Kobza. “They found our institute and were like, ‘Hey, can you guys confirm what we’re seeing?’”

“We were just yellowtailing, normal reef fishing, and it just came up next to the boat,” Ellington told the Weekly. “It stayed around for a while, probably five or 10 minutes, but it actually didn’t try to snag any of our fish. It kept looking at the chum bag, but it never tried to bite it or anything.”

McComb-Kobza has more than 20 years of experience researching endangered species, including worldwide studies of white sharks with baited remote underwater cameras from the northeast Atlantic down to Florida. From her own experience, and after conferring with four colleagues, Ellington’s pictures were a dead giveaway.

The researchers confirmed the sixor seven-foot shark as a juvenile white, likely less than a year old by their estimation, as newborn white sharks are already five feet long.

White sharks are known as a highly migratory species, frequently traveling from Canada all the way to the Gulf of Mexico and back throughout the year.

“They are cruising by the Keys, there’s no doubt; it’s just that we don’t know exactly when and why,” said McComb-Kobza. “But to find a juvenile is interesting. What we do know is that white sharks have a temperature preference, and 55 degrees is kind of their sweet spot. … The Keys have had some cold snaps, so that water is kind of conducive to those guys being there.”

The juvenile sighting marks the second publicized visit of a “snowbird” shark in 2023 as “Sable,” another juvenile white shark tagged by research