NEW BEDFORD, Mass. — November 15, 2012 — Great white sharks are kind of like snowbirds. Some head south in September; others linger deep into autumn.
"There are sharks that do stick around, and some leave early, and we don't know why," Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries shark expert Greg Skomal said Wednesday.
Skomal provided an update on the finned class of 2012, the great white sharks that he and other researchers tagged this summer off Cape Cod. So far, the star pupil is Mary Lee, a nearly 3,500-pound fish that has provided interesting migration information to researchers.
In mid-September, Skomal and a shark team from Ocearch, a nonprofit research organization, fitted Mary Lee and another great white named Genie with three types of tags, including a real-time satellite tag that allows researchers to track their travels when they surface long enough for transmission.
As of 12:48 p.m. Wednesday, Mary Lee was located off Brunswick, Ga., according to the Ocearch global shark tracking website. Skomal said he wasn't surprised the great white was detected in the South.
"One of the things we noticed with Mary Lee is that she didn't stay long in Cape Cod; as a matter of fact she left by mid- to late September and started heading south," Skomal said. "Her migration was pretty rapid."
Genie has not been heard from in about a month, Skomal said.
"We don't really know where she is, but we're hoping she comes up long enough to transmit and give us a location sometime soon."
Read the full story in the New Bedford Standard Times