1,000-pound great white shark named Ernst spotted four miles off MS-AL coastline

A massive great white shark named Ernst surfaced last weekend just four miles off the Alabama coast.

Ernst, who is 12 feet long and 1,009 pounds, swam south of Mobile Bay on Sunday, according to OCEARCH, a nonprofit organization that tags and tracks sharks.

Great white sharks migrate each year from Newfoundland to the Gulf of Mexico. But OCEARCH said Ernst’s behavior was uncommon.

“We’ve seen white sharks in the northeastern Gulf before — usually far offshore,” John Tyminski, a senior data scientist for OCEARCH, said in a social media post. “Seeing one this close to shore is less common.”

In another post, he said Ernst’s visit near shore “highlights our need to better understand the drivers of this apex predators’ movements in the Gulf.”

Ernst’s last known location, recorded when the tag on her dorsal fin breached the water’s surface, was just a few miles from the Mississippi Coast.

The female shark arrived in Alabama’s waters after a long journey around the country’s coastline. She was first tagged last October in Nova Scotia, swam down the Atlantic seaboard and rounded the Florida peninsula to reach the Gulf of Mexico.

It is unclear why Ernst swam so close to shore. Great white sharks prefer water between 50 and 80 degrees, and young sharks often stay in warmer water close to shore. Ernst was nearing adult age when researchers tagged her last October.

Researchers named Ernst in honor of a ferry called William G. Ernst, which has connected rural communities on two islands in Nova Scotia to the mainland for decades.

Her arrival near the Mississippi-Alabama coastline is the latest of several shark visits in recent years. OCEARCH tracked a huge, pregnant tiger shark named Hanna off the Mississippi Coast last September. And a great white shark named Keji was spotted south of the Mississippi Coast in 2024.

This story was originally published January 14, 2026 at 11:01 AM.