A few weeks ago, our Gulf Great White Shark Society expedition to Cape Cod provided an opportunity to spend time with one of the world’s leading great white shark researchers, Dr. Greg Skomal.
Skomal was kind enough to invite us to his office for a visit that turned into an approximately two-hour conversation covering a wide range of shark-related subjects.
We had a young lady named Marina from our wildlife mentoring program accompanying us on the expedition, and the opportunity for her to sit down with someone of Skomal’s experience and knowledge was something special.
For me, the visit also brought an unexpected connection between the great white sharks of Cape Cod and the waters off the Texas and Louisiana coasts.
During our conversation, Skomal told me about research involving great white sharks at Flower Garden Banks National Marine Sanctuary in the Gulf.
He generously shared information about the project, opening the door to a fascinating investigation into how these enormous predators use offshore reef environments.
Great Whites and the Flower Garden Banks
Located roughly 80 to 125 miles offshore from Texas and Louisiana, Flower Garden Banks National Marine Sanctuary protects an extraordinary collection of coral reefs and other underwater habitats.
These offshore banks support a remarkable variety of marine life, including numerous shark species.
But what about great whites?
A scientific paper published in September 2026 in Frontiers in Marine Science, titled “White Shark Occurrence in Flower Garden Banks National Marine Sanctuary Revealed From Acoustic Telemetry in an Offshore MPA,” provides new information on that subject.
The study, led by Michael A. Dance and a team of researchers that included Skomal, used acoustic tracking technology to document great white shark movements associated with the sanctuary and surrounding offshore habitats.
Researchers recorded detections of nine individually tagged great white sharks in the region between 2022 and 2025. These animals had originally been tagged along the Atlantic coast of the United States and Canada.
The findings add another important piece to the growing scientific understanding of great white shark movements into the Gulf.
For those of us who have spent years documenting great white shark activity in Gulf waters, research like this is particularly exciting.
It provides scientific information that can help us better understand where these animals travel and how they interact with habitats far removed from the areas most commonly associated with great whites.
More to Come in Tide Magazine
One of the great privileges of working in wildlife journalism and conservation is having opportunities to learn directly from researchers who have dedicated their careers to understanding these animals.
Skomal’s generosity with his time and willingness to share information made our Cape Cod expedition particularly memorable.
And the Flower Garden Banks research deserves a much closer examination than we can provide here.
I’m currently developing an in-depth feature for Tide Magazine, published by the Coastal Conservation Association, that will explore this research, its findings and what it may tell us about great white sharks in the Gulf.
That feature is scheduled for publication in May 2027.
In the meantime, the Gulf Great White Shark Society will continue following the science and documenting the growing body of information about these remarkable predators.
The more we learn about great white sharks in the Gulf, the more interesting the story becomes.
Chester Moore
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