A great white shark recently passed through Gulf Coast waters, offering scientists a rare and revealing look at how far — and how fast — these apex predators can travel.

Ernst, a 12-foot female, journeyed from Nova Scotia to the Gulf in a matter of months, passing waters near Gulf Shores before continuing west toward Louisiana. Her movements were tracked by OCEARCH, a nonprofit that conducts shark research and shares real-time tracking data.

According to OCEARCH's website, Ernst was tagged off the coast of Nova Scotia through collaborative research with the Tancook Islands Marine Field Station. She weighs approximately 1,009 pounds and is considered a sub-adult, meaning she has not yet reached full size. After being tagged in October 2025, according to OCEARCH's tracker, by January, she had traveled south into the Gulf, covering the distance in roughly 90 days.

Sean Powers, director of the Stokes School of Marine and Environmental Sciences at the University of South Alabama, said the journey confirms long-held ideas about great white shark migration while also underscoring the value of modern tracking technology.

"The fact that sharks are migratory, especially white sharks, has been known for quite some time," Powers said. "But the fact that the shark went all the way from Nova Scotia to the Gulf in about 90 days is just amazing to think about."

Powers said Ernst's movement was likely driven by a combination of temperature preference and food availability. White sharks favor cooler waters and must consume large amounts of prey to sustain their size.

"We think that white sharks are very temperature sensitive," he said. "They need to maximize how much food they get."

The Gulf, Powers said, offers abundant feeding opportunities while not too cold, like the waters of Nova Scotia where winter temperatures cause many aquatic and avian species to migrate.

"We have rich foraging grounds. We have rich fisheries with lots of mackerel, tunas," he said. "So the reason why a big shark would come to the Gulf isn't surprising to us."

While great white sharks are still rare in Alabama waters, Powers said they are no longer completely unexpected. Researchers documented their first immature white shark in the region about two years ago, followed by additional sightings since then.

"For the last 30 years of my career, we studied an ocean that has largely been free, or at least had very low densities, of these large predatory sharks," Powers said.

That, he said, wasn't the historically natural state of the Gulf.

Decades of overfishing in the '70s and '80s dramatically reduced populations of large sharks, shaping scientists' understanding of what the ocean looked like — and what came to be considered normal.

"What we're realizing is this is what a healthy ocean is supposed to look like," he said. "It's supposed to have top predators like Ernst, this white shark, in the system."

Despite the attention Ernst's visit has drawn, Powers emphasized there is little reason for public concern. The shark's tracked position placed her roughly four miles offshore in deeper, cooler water, far from areas where people typically swim.

"Shark attacks are extremely rare," Powers said.

He added that most shark incidents in the region involve resident species, such as bull or tiger sharks, during warmer months — not migratory great whites passing through deeper offshore waters.

For Powers, Ernst's appearance off the Alabama coast is less about fear and more about perspective.

"Large sharks in particular aren't that abundant, but they are an element of a healthy ocean," he said.

As tracking technology continues to improve, scientists expect to be able to see more evidence of how mobile — and resilient — these animals truly are. Ernst's journey, Powers said, offers a reminder that Alabama's coastline is part of a much larger and still-mysterious marine system.

Gabriella Chavez is a Report for America corps member who writes about growth and development in Baldwin County and our natural spaces for Gulf Coast Media. Your donation to match our RFA grant helps keep her writing stories like this one; please consider making a tax-deductible gift of any amount today by visiting https://tinyurl.com/yaf8yf5n.