INQUISITR.COM / News & Politics

Great White Shark, Mary Lee, Spotted Off The Jersey Shore

By Dustin Wicksell
Published on: 09:40 PST, May 7, 2015

A massive great white shark named Mary Lee has just entered the ocean off the New Jersey shoreline, making her presence known both via satellite and on Twitter.

The shark was reported roughly 10 miles off the coast of Wildwood Thursday morning, according to New Jersey.com, continuing on a steady northward course that has carried her along the Eastern Seaboard. Earlier this week, Mary Lee was reported off the coast of Virginia and Delaware, having traveled from her favored habitat near Georgia and the Carolinas.

Along with a multitude of other specimens, Mary Lee sports a satellite tag from Ocearch, a group dedicated to tracking sharks worldwide. Second only in popularity among their great whites to Katharine, Mary Lee even has a tongue-in-cheek presence on Twitter, which Ocearch used to alert New Jersey residents to her presence.

First tagged almost three years ago in Cape Cod, the 3,456-pound female great white makes herself known to researchers every time her dorsal fin breaks the surface. In recent weeks, the shark has been extremely active, surfacing multiple times each day and often crossing back upon her own course. As the Press of Atlantic City relates, the great white “pinged” seven more times over the course of Thursday morning, following her first signal from New Jersey waters.

While moving north, Mary Lee has remained close to shore, much to the concern of some beachgoers. As the white shark paralleled the Delaware coastline over the last several days, she largely remained just 10 miles offshore, a distance too close for comfort among some residents. Ocearch, however, notes that it isn’t unusual to see a great white so close to the shoreline this time of year, though the ability to track them is a relatively recent innovation.

Last year, a great white was filmed off the coast of Cape May, attacking the side of a fisherman’s boat. As the Inquisitr reported at the time, the shark was drawn to the vessel by the anglers’ bait, which was kept in a bag alongside the hull. Though footage of the shark aggressively biting into the boat made its way across the internet, the great white was, in truth, only attempting to feed upon the bait fish.

[Photo by Ryan Pierse / Getty Images]

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