Largest Great White Shark Ever Recorded Near a Tourist Destination
By Greg Evans
The largest Great White Shark ever recorded near a tourist destination is making its round in the news again, as if it happened yesterday, but in fact, it was back in June. Relax, Cape Cod, it wasn’t you guys, it was in Lake Erie off Perkins Beach. Scientists are baffled.
Ok, that’s not entirely true. The 14-foot man eater was actually measured off the coast of North Carolina, near Cape Hatteras on the Outer Banks.
In January of 2025, the Great White Shark named, “Contender” by shark biologists (better known by their scientific name, maniacs), was hunting for surfers and snorkelers off the coast of northern Florida and Southern Georgia, when it was first tagged 45 miles off the coast of Georgia.
Great White Shark sightings are fairly common lately, especially on the Eastern Seaboard of the United States, thanks to the fast food epidemic and humans getting so fat they resemble the sharks’ favorite food, plump seals, who have also been increasing in population.
There have been, “officially”, 12 shark attacks in the US this year, and 38 worldwide. That is a lot of mistaking of humans for chubby seals.
And people thought Peter Benchley’s Jaws, was just a horror novel. “It’s out there in the water…waiting. Nature’s most relentless predator. It fears nothing. It attacks anything. It devours everything.”
And it’s not just a horror novel, it’s real. It’s as real as yesterday’s one-night stand. Jurassic Park comes to life. Sharks have existed for around 400 million years. That is 400 million years to fine-tune their hunting skills. Oddly, in 400 million years, they still have trouble telling apart a seal from a portly human being floating around in the waves. I guess I do too.
The Great White Shark species, though, has only supposedly existed for 6-10 million years. That is very strange. And they are different than ancient sharks such as their dining preferences. Scientists think Great White Sharks evolved from Mako sharks. From fish eaters to man (mammal) eaters. Wasn’t Mako island a mysterious and somewhat creepy island where girls became mermaids on nights the moon was full?
Despite all the fascination, movies, and promo like Shark Week, Great White Sharks are still wholly an enigma. There is a great deal of literature and terrifying pictures available on, and about them, however, the reality is that much remains unknown, such as the fact that they are a genetic paradox and they have inexplicable and complex behaviors.
Their DNA is a mystery to science. Everything about them defies evolutionary and reproductive logic, just like their inability to differentiate a corpulent human stuffed with cheeseburgers and a tubby seal.
The closed type of DNA we have found that resembles the Great White Sharks turned up peculiarly in the halls of congress…or so I’ve heard.
The name, “Great White Shark,” was given to the killer fish by Irish poet, novelist, and naturalist, Oliver Goldsmith, in 1774, in his book An History of the Earth, and Animated Nature. He also continues to have the best definition and description of this wily, blood-thirsty dinosaur. "The Great White Shark, which is the largest of the kind, joins to the most amazing rapidity, the strongest appetites for mischief: as he approaches nearly in size to the whale, he far surpasses him in strength and celerity, in the formidable arrangement of his teeth, and his insatiable desire of plunder".
There has also been a lot of chatter in the news about how AI is making leaps and bounds and will someday run the world. No quite. They will never conquer the Great White Shark.