OUTER BANKS, Va. – Two great white sharks were recently tracked swimming near the North Carolina coast. One of the sharks, named Genie, is a repeat visitor to the South; she was tracked in the Eastern Shore last spring. She’s also the first tagged Great White to be tagged in the Atlantic waters.
Genie swam into the Pamlico Sound in the Outer Banks around 3:30 a.m. Thursday. She weighs in at nearly 2,300 pounds and is about 14 feet long.
She was first tagged in 2012 by researchers at Ocearch, an organization whose mission is to track the movement and study the behavior and health of sharks in the deep blue sea.
“We don’t know where they breed, we don’t know where they feed, we don’t know where they give birth,” said Chris Fischer (in an older interview), who founded the nonprofit Ocearch. “So until we figure that out, we can’t even put policy in place to protect ’em.”
According to Ocearch’s website, Genie has traveled more than 6,000 miles, swimming as far north as Massachusetts and as far south as the Florida coast.
Another great white shark, named Katharine, was also spotted several miles east of the Outer Banks. But she hasn’t been seen, or “pinged” as researchers call it, since Friday, April 3, 2015, according to the website.
Ocearch says a “ping” is determined when the tagged shark’s dorsal fin breaks the surface of the water and transmits a signal to a satellite. That transmission sends back an estimated location of the shark on its journey.
You can track the path of these two sharks, along with others, at this link: http://www.ocearch.org/#SharkTracker
You can also follow Katharine on Twitter.
