Mary-Lee, a 4.9m great white tagged by Ocearch last year off Cape Cod, Massachusetts, USA, has been tracked swimming far up St. Helena Sound – a coastal inlet in South Carolina.
Great whites, unlike their bull shark (Zambezi) brothers and sisters, are not known to venture too far up the brackish waters of coastal estuaries, and Mary-Lee’s movements have experts puzzled.
Chris Fisher, who heads the Ocearch studies, suggests that Mary-Lee could be pregnant and looking for a place to spawn her pups, but added that it’s not the season for white sharks to be giving birth.
Mary-Lee’s movements according to Ocearch’s Global Shark Tracker.
On their Facebook page, Ocearch asked locals for more information about the waters that Mary-Lee has navigated her way into, and Don Anderson, who lives in the area where the 1,588kg shark has been monitored, claims that “she is in about 20 to 25 feet (6 – 7.5m) of water. It is a rich estuary full of shrimp and other bait. Water temp is about 68 degrees (20 Celcius). Redfish and speckled trout are plentiful. We shrimp on the shallow marsh surrounding the area she is in.”
The methods used by Ocearch in catching, tagging and releasing white sharks have been the subject of some controversy, but their findings have also been uncovering important data about the habits and movements of one of the ocean’s apex predators.
Follow Mary-Lee’s movements on Ocearch’s Global Shark Tracker
underwater caverns that stretch inland? No idea.
Had one sighting of a great white reported just passed the old boat launching area on the Nahoon River many years back…enough salt water in that area, esp when the estuary has a very slow feed of freshwater at its head.