Jameson may be the world’s most famous great white shark this week, following his dramatic rescue from a Cape Cod beach, yet the formerly-stranded animal has decided to remain in the area after surviving his ordeal, as his tag revealed on Friday.
Last Monday, the young, seven-foot-long white shark found himself in a precarious position, beached by a retreating tide on a sandbar off the Chatham coast, as the Inquisitr previously reported. A team from the Atlantic White Shark Conservancy, along with Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries shark expert Dr. Greg Skomal, came to the shark’s rescue, dragging it back into the water and resuscitating it after 15 minutes of “CPR.” Though the shark swam away under its own power, Dr. Skomal asserted it had only a 50 percent chance of surviving its ordeal.
It now appears that the white shark, named Jameson by the conservancy, has not only survived, but also found the waters off Cape Cod to still be hospitable. On Friday morning, a receiver off the South Beach cut detected Jameson, revealing that he was still moving just off the coast. While the conservancy allowed that the signal was a positive sign, they cautioned that there could be no positive confirmation of Jameson’s survival until the white shark was detected again, as Cape Cod Today reports.
Jameson, the white shark rescued on Monday was detected by the South Beach cut receiver this morning. Good news, he most likely survived.
— Atlantic White Shark (@A_WhiteShark) July 17, 2015
While Jameson is the most famous shark in the world right now, he isn’t the only great white to be spotted off Cape Cod. According to NECN , the White Shark Conservancy documented five different great whites in the region during their research trip on Friday. The organization tweeted a photo of one of the sharks they encountered, as they continue a five-year-long population study they are conducting in the region. The conservancy is currently engaged in their second summer of tagging, identifying not only the number of white sharks that migrate to the cape each summer, but also those who are repeat visitors.
This is one of at least five white sharks spotted off the coast of #Chatham on today’s #AWSC research trip! @MassDMF pic.twitter.com/eqyt5WarpH
— Atlantic White Shark (@A_WhiteShark) July 18, 2015
White sharks have become a welcome presence off the Massachusetts coast in recent years. Drawn to the area by a native seal population, the sharks have provided researchers with a unique opportunity to document and follow them, revealing migration patterns that have taken the great whites into the middle of the Atlantic, and also into the Gulf of Mexico. The sharks have also proven to be a boon to the local economy, as beachgoers flock to the region in hopes of spotting a great white.
[Image: Atlantic White Shark Conservancy via Twitter ]