Tip o’ the hat to The Dorsal Fin for this article.  It’s been a while since I’ve written about the great whites of New England, but this is mainly because, according to the tagging studies performed by Greg Skomal of the Massachusetts DMF, the area’s great whites should be off of Florida right now.  So imagine the surprise when a fishing vessel off of Chatham, Mass. reported encountering a 20-foot great white a week before Christmas.

White sharks are capable of maintaining a body temperature higher than that of the surrounding water, but it’s unusual for any sharks other than porbeagles and Greenland sharks to be found anywhere off of New England during the winter.  Also, at 20 feet, that would make this shark among the largest documented.  Here’s hoping that a.) the shark was released alive, and b.) there were some reliable measurements taken of this beast.