With An Eye On Cape Cod, Mary Lee The Great White Shark Heads North


Mary Lee, one of the world’s most famous great white sharks, has made a dramatic turn northward, swimming toward the New Jersey shoreline with a possible end goal of returning to Cape Cod for the first time since she was tagged by researchers there several years ago.

Mary Lee’s movements this summer have been something of a mystery. A large number of white sharks have congregated off the coast of Cape Cod, as they do every summer. While researchers with the Atlantic White Shark Conservancy have identified more than 80 individual great whites in the region this year, both Mary Lee and her fellow white shark, Katharine, have been notable holdouts, seemingly avoiding the area. All that appears likely to change, however, as Mary Lee has set out on a northward course, abruptly and with little warning.

Both Mary Lee and Katharine were tagged by Ocearch off Cape Cod in 2012, as National Geographic reports. Since then, their lives have been revealed in stunning detail to researchers. Dramatically different individuals, each shark is possessed of its own unique habits. While Katharine has exhibited a distinct coastal pattern, migrating along shorelines from Cape Cod to New Smyrna Beach with regularity, Mary Lee has opted to mostly remain in the waters off Georgia, which have become a central territory for her. Earlier this year, Mary Lee became a social media sensation when she swam along the coast to the New York Bight (a known nursery ground for young white sharks), as the Washington Post reports, though she returned south after just a few weeks.

In recent months, both Mary Lee and Katharine have made the area off the Outer Banks their home. On October 4, however, Mary Lee made a dramatic and sudden course change, swimming over the edge of the continental shelf and turning north. By the afternoon of October 5, she was north of Virginia Beach, and continued on that path in the ensuing days. On October 7, she turned back toward shore, and by the following day, Mary Lee was swimming just off Ocean City.

In a post on their Facebook page, Ocearch asserted their belief that Mary Lee’s ultimate destination will be Cape Cod. They cited the fact that Katharine began her journey to Cape Cod last year during a waning crescent moon, the exact period of the month into which the calendar is currently entering. The non-profit suggested that white sharks might use the moon as their own calendar, and pointed out that Mark Lee has not returned to the region since she was tagged by them in 2012.

Wherever Mary Lee goes, she brings with her a significant social media presence. By the time that the shark turned south after her last visit to New York, she had amassed over 80,000 followers on a Twitter account unaffiliated with Ocearch, no small feat for any public personality. She isn’t the only white shark to dominate the news this summer, however, as several of her brethren found themselves stranded on sandbars in Cape Cod, with mixed results (only one of three white sharks survived that experience).

Mary Lee’s return to the cape, three years after her last visit, would be an unexpected and welcome surprise to researchers as they come to the close of a milestone summer that has seen them identify a record number of white sharks in the region. With the northern Atlantic’s population of great white sharks well on the rebound, it remains to be seen if Mary Lee will make her way to Cape Cod before the onset of winter drives her south once again.

[Photo by Elias Levy – Own Work via Flickr | CC BY 2.0 ]

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