WOODS HOLE, Mass., — February 8, 2014 — It was the Saturday after the Fourth of July 2012 and Nauset Beach in Orleans was packed with thousands of swimmers, surfers and kayakers. They were unaware that just 150 feet offshore, Large Marge, a 16-foot-long female great white shark, was swimming slowly north, undetected in just 8 feet of water.
Then, Marge did something Cape Cod great whites rarely do. She surfaced, and the surreal sight of that flat gray triangle gliding along and the enormous shadow beneath it immediately caught paddleboarder Dana Richardson's eye.
Richardson shouted a warning, waving his paddle at kayaker Walter Szulc Jr. who was unaware that he was being followed until he looked over his shoulder, saw the fin at arm's length and the big gray body slipping under his small plastic vessel.
It was the photo that shot around the world, even though Large Marge didn't cause any harm other than momentary panic and a temporary beach closure.
According to one theory, Marge might just be one of a handful of dominant great whites that have set up territory on the Outer Cape like a lion at a watering hole, where she prefers to hunt for seals without much competition from other sharks. If that's true, she's staked out an area off Orleans and Eastham that may be the most popular and populated territory on the Cape for another water-loving species — us.
It was only fitting then, that the next time Marge made the news, her exact position, right down to every beat of her tail, was tracked with unprecedented precision and recorded on high-definition video by a 5-foot-long self-propelled yellow torpedo. A relatively new marine research tool, this autonomous underwater vehicle is known by its commercial name REMUS-100, but dubbed SharkCam by researchers. It shadowed the big shark like an attendant remora, showcasing groundbreaking technology developed by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution's Oceanographic Systems Laboratory with funding from the Discovery Channel. It's a leap forward in shark science, adding the third dimension of real-time video, that also has major implications for public safety.
"It tells us where sharks are spending their time, how they may approach seals and swimming and surfing beaches," said state shark scientist Greg Skomal who worked with WHOI researchers on the project.
Read the full story and watch the SharkCam footage at the Cape Cod Times