Tracking Mary Lee: She’s Become Quite a Celebrity

16 Jun 2015

In honor of Shark Week beginning on July 5th 2015 on the Discovery Channel, today we are writing about Mary Lee: a shark. Mary Lee is a 16-foot, 3500 pound shark that has been traveling along the New Jersey shores. She was, at one point, only a half mile from the Lavallette beaches after disappearing from radar to then show up along the Long Island shores.

Because of her frequent pings, social media savvy, and proximity to the Mid-Atlantic coast, Mary Lee has been quite a popular shark. She has now gained almost 74k followers on Twitter (@MaryLeeShark) in a short period of time (less than a month). She has followers just watching and waiting to see where she will show up next.

She’s tagged with a GPS tracking device. Two years ago, Marine Biologists at OCEARCH implanted this tracking device into her which is why Mary Lee can be tracked now.

Dr. James Gelsleichter, University of North Florida’s researcher, says that most of the work being done is trying to determine where sharks go and why. At one point, Mary Lee was thought to be pregnant and might be coming back to give birth. Princeton’s Shark Research Institute’s executive director, Marie Lavine says there is a nursery area that is located in Garden State waters. Many white sharks go there to give birth. Other experts state she might just be following food and just happened to find her way back to where she was originally tagged.

The GPS tracker on recently showed her hightailing it south and was east of Fenwick Isle in Delaware approximately 20 miles.

She has been touring the Mid-Atlantic coastal waters from Virginia right off Long Island over the past month.

A ping previously indicated that Mary Lee was just off the shoreline of Cape May County and a little east of Townsends Inlet.

Each time her dorsal fin shows up above the water, biologists are pinged and can determine where she is.

Interested readers can track her movements on OSEARCH web page.

The Shark Research Institute and OCEARCH have been trying to change how great white sharks are seeing by humans which generally view them as man-eaters.

Lavine says that people swim with sharks constantly because sharks really could care less about biting people. Lavine’s scientific research organization has gathered up a large database of global shark attack information.

It was around 100 years ago that New Jersey experienced a fatal attack.


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