Great white sharks are some of the most feared fish in the ocean by both humans and other sea creatures further down the food chain. They’re not exactly social either, generally known for roaming around solo—but not always, it turns out. Researchers were shocked to find a pair of great whites who appear to have become inseparable buds.
Scientists at the nonprofit research organization Ocearch first tagged the two sharks, named Simon and Jekyll, off the coast of Georgia in December 2022. As the months progressed, researchers noticed something extraordinary about them. They were moving in tandem—traveling side-by-side for over 4,000 miles up the Atlantic Coast to the Gulf of St. Lawrence in Canada.
“This is potentially groundbreaking,” Dr. Bob Hueter, chief scientist at Ocearch, said in a Facebook video chronicling the phenomenon. “White sharks lead a very solitary existence, so we don’t really expect to see them staying together. But Simon and Jekyll, they seem to be buddies in the sense that they’re going in the same place at the same time.”
Both sharks are juveniles, with Simon weighing in at 434 pounds and 9 feet 6 inches long, and Jekyll at 395 pounds and 8 feet 8 inches.
When Ocearch first captured and tagged the animals, they took various samples, including blood and pieces of muscle, for research. Given the atypical behavior of these two sharks, Hueter said that their geneticists are currently looking into whether they may be siblings—either brothers or half-brothers opting to stick together.
Either way, great white camaraderie outside of a Pixar film is pretty much unheard of until now.
“We’ve never seen anything quite like this before,” said Hueter.
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