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Wednesday, January 23, 2013

More on Mary Lee

Here is a good article on Mary Lee:

Great white shark returns to Myrtle Beach

She 'pings' a mark on the tracking map whenever her dorsal fin pops up out of the water. It's a satellite tracking device. So if she stays submerged for long periods, there will be long track segments. If she is on the surface, feeding for example, you will see more 'pings'. Looking at her entrance into Pamlico Sound through Ocracoke Inlet, you see that she appears to have hiked across the beach and island. What has happened is that she stayed completely submerged from the last ping out in the ocean, till she surfaced off Ocracoke harbor. Then she went back under, and back out through the inlet, surfacing again well up the beach toward Hatteras. Her last ping was about 1 this morning, well off Hatteras, out over the 50 fathom line. She's been doing a Run Silent, Run Deep ever since.

OCEARCH Tracker

Mary Lee is back ...


Mary Lee being tagged, 17 September 2012, off Cape Cod. Photo by OCEARCH.
 
Yesterday at 4:00 PM Mary Lee was inside, in Pamlico Sound, paddling around the entrance to Ocracoke harbor. Just like the big white in Jaws. INSIDE!!!

Then she went back out through the inlet, and 90 minutes later was moving quickly down the oceanside of the island.

When she was down in Florida, at one point she was within 200 yards, perhaps closer, of the beach. She seems to like to poke around inlets and estuaries.

Ocracoke is one of the places we visit. We wade around in the ocean on the beach side.

Is this too cool, or what?

You can track Mary Lee here:

OCEARCH shark tracking

More on Mary Lee:

Mary Lee - a legendary shark



Update: Mary Lee is further out to sea this morning, moving more than fifty miles in less than 24 hours. At 1:00 AM ET on 23 January she was near the 50 fathom line, northeast of Hatteras, which is where the continental shelf begins its rapid drop off into the depths of the Atlantic. She is out of the warm Gulf Stream and into the southern reaches of the Labrador current.