Tagged great white shark in Atlantic may be pregnant

Maybe pregnant and maybe heading back to New York – that's the current status scientists are guessing for a 3,541-pound female Great White Shark that is part of a shark tracking program.

Nicknamed, Nukumi, the shark has been in swimming in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. She is part of scientific organization OCEARCH's Global Shark Tracker study. Nukumi is the largest shark they've tagged. Researchers believe Nukumi is at least 50 years old.

"We've known that white sharks live in the Atlantic, but actually the studies of the Atlantic population have been very sparse compared with other areas," said Bob Hueter, OCEARCH chief scientist. "So we at OCEARCH are trying to figure out the overall sort of the puzzle there of their entire lives from birth to death. And we're getting very close to completing the last pieces of the puzzle," Heuter said.

The researchers attached a tracker to Nukumi's dorsal fin in October, which sends out a ping to OCEARCH whenever the shark reaches the surface. The female spent time in the waters off the Carolinas, a spot where researchers believe the sharks mate, then headed out to open ocean.

"Nukumi was a critical addition, a critical piece of that puzzle, because she represented the very top and the oldest end of the lives of these animals. And furthermore, a female who is probably still reproductively active," Heuter said.

Great Whites Sharks in this part of the world are known to give birth to their "pups" off New York's Long Island.

Nukumi's last ping was on April 11. Researchers believe she's hunting fish and squid in deep waters, and if she's pregnant, will head to the birthing waters off New York.

Migratory patterns of white sharks from the western Atlantic Ocean are not well known. At first, researchers were excited that Nukumi may be heading to European waters. It would have been the first ever tracking of a shark crossing the Atlantic ocean. Now they think she'll follow the same pattern another shark, named Lydia, took. Lydia did a U-turn in the middle of the Atlantic and headed back to the U.S. coast.

"We're just waiting for her next her next signal, her next phoning home. So she tells us where she is. But we would predict at this point that the next time she reappears, she'll be back over on the western side of the mid-Atlantic ridge," Hueter said.

But since it's been weeks since Nukumi surfaced, there's still a chance she could show up somewhere unexpected.

The shark was named Nukumi, which means grandmother in the indigenous language of the Mi'kmaq people of Nova Scotia.

OCEARCH says it has tagged 416 animals since the program began.