13 PEOPLE | CULTURE | HAPPENINGS | TRENDS beach bites A Tale of Two Sharks Mary Lee and Katharine By HENRY LIVERMAN Two great white sharks, dubbed Mary Lee and Katharine by the OCEARCH scientists who track them, are again pinging in the South Atlantic. The 3,456 and 2,300 pound, respec-tively, ocean predators are known to swim in the waters off of North Carolina beaches as the ocean warms during the summer months. While most beachgoers hope to avoid great white sharks and their rows of serrated teeth, OCEARCH scientists get up-close and personal with the legendary jaws to track them. With a worldwide network, track-ing more than 80 sharks in places from South Africa to North Carolina via satellite, scientists know where the sharks have been and where they’re going through a chip implanted on the dorsal fin. Located in Cape Cod, Mary Lee was tagged during September 2012, followed by Katharine, a year later in August 2013. Gregory B. Skomal, Ph.D., senior marine fisheries biologist with the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries, has been studying white sharks off the East Coast of the US since 2009. “We’ve tagged 39 white sharks and we’ve tagged five of those with OCEARCH. They’ve tagged well over 100 sharks globally,” he says. Skomal and his team work with OCEARCH to help it keep track of and tag sharks in the northeast. Skomal personally tagged Mary Lee and Katharine. “We’ve tagged 39 great white sharks, 38 of them off the coast of Cape Cod, Massachusetts. And one of them was tagged off Jacksonville, Florida,” he says. Skomal says the technology used on Mary Lee and Katharine allows scientists to track their movements in almost real time, which visitors to the OCEARCH website can follow along with. Great white sharks, unlike most fish, have no natural feeding grounds. They roam the oceans without a particular seabed to call home. However, the OCEARCH data and local reports of sightings have shown that Mary Lee and Katharine return frequently to Wrightsville Beach’s waters. Throughout the year they prowl the Atlantic Seaboard, but the warmer waters of the Carolinas seem to be a yearly home for the two. “By putting a couple of names on these sharks and being able to OCEARCH and a team of scientists tag Mary Lee, a 16-foot, 3,456-pound female great white shark, with a tracking chip off the coast of Cape Cod, Massachusetts, September 17, 2012. MIKE ESTABROOK/OCEARCH www.wrightsvillebeachmagazine.com WBM
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