White shark tracking 2025: first 7 months

Follow the live tracks of the white sharks tagged by the Oceans Research Institute

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Oceans Research Institute in collaboration with the Shark Research Foundation, the South African Institute for Aquatic Biodiversity and Stellenbosch University tagged 4 white sharks in Chyntsa (Eastern Cape) in March and another one in Mossel Bay (Western Cape) in April 2025.

By looking at the map above, we can see how the major focus area for those white sharks in the first 7 months have been the Eastern Cape from Algoa Bay (Port Elizabeth/Gqeberha) almost to the border with kwaZulu Natal (Port St Johns).

Two sharks are worth pointing out so far. One is Maya, a 2.2m female white shark (named after the daughter of our director), which after being tagged in Mossel Bay, quickly moved East and stayed for an extended period around Algoa Bay (yet not entering the bay much).

And then James, a 2.7m male, tagged in Chyntsa, has been the only white sharks which moved west of Algoa Bay, yet staying offshore over the continental shelf. Then it disappeared for 2 months and recently appeared in Richards Bay… on the beach, providing two accurate locations (photo below on the left).

Those locations made us worry that it could have been caught in one of the nets or drumlines (figure above on the right) which the kwaZulu Natal Sharks Board uses to intentionally fish large sharks to reduce their populations. It is also possible that it was caught by someone from the beach and then returned back to the sea. Fortunately, after a couple of weeks of trepidation, James made it and pinged slightly more offshore, yet still in the same danger area.

If you want to follow James or any of the other tagged white sharks in almost real time, you can at: https://www.oceans-research.com/projects/marine/