Researchers have tagged the biggest great white shark they have ever spotted in the Atlantic off Canada — a more than 17-foot long “queen of the ocean” weighing a staggering 3,541 pounds.

The nonprofit OCEARCH team caught the mammoth shark Saturday in waters off Nova Scotia, naming her Nukumi, after the “legendary wise old grandmother figure of the Native American Mi’kmaq people,” the group said.

Expedition leader Chris Fischer said it was “really humbling to stand next to a large animal like that” before Nukumi was safely returned to the sea with a series of tags to monitor her movements.

He called her a “proper queen of the ocean, matriarch of the sea — the balance keeper of the future.”

“A grandmother — she is probably 50 years old, and certainly her first litters of pups she would have been having 30 years ago are also making babies,” he said in a Twitter video of the shark that measured 17 feet, 2 inches.

“When you look at all of the healed-over scars and blotches and things that are on her skin you are really looking at the story of her life. And it makes you feel really insignificant. But, a powerful experience for all of us.”

While the research organization has tagged similar sized great whites elsewhere in the world, Nukumi is the biggest in the northwest Atlantic, Fisher told CBC.

He called great whites “the guardians of all of your fish stocks … preventing seals from over-foraging and crashing the whole system.”

While under their control, the team took a series of samples from Nukumi, then fitted her with three tags to record her movements, including how deep she swims, for the next five years.

OCEARCH said the data means “this matriarch will share her wisdom with us for years to come.”

“We look forward to learning more from this wise guardian of our ocean’s eco-system,” the group said in a Facebook post.