Aug 31st 2013, 20:45, by Lucas Mearian, Computerworld
Meet Mary Lee, a great white shark that's the same weight and nearly the same length as a Buick. And, by the way, you may have been swimming within a few feet of her this past year and not known it.
Since last September, when she received an array of radio, acoustic, and satellite tags, Mary Lee has travelled from Massachusetts to Florida, often hugging the coastline so closely that scientists tracking her called beach authorities in Florida to warn them about her. The 16-foot, 3456-pound shark also headed into open ocean, taking a February vacation off the beaches of Bermuda.
"She was undoubtedly not the only one there. Sharks have probably been doing it for millions of years," said Nick Whitney, a marine biologist with the Mote Marine Laboratories in Sarasota, Florida. "We're learning things that ten years ago we would have never dreamed we could have learned about these species."
OCEARCHMary Lee, a 16-foot 3456-pound great white shark, traversed the East Coast over the past year, at times hugging the shoreline so close as to prompt a warning call from researchers.
Whitney, who spoke from a research vessel off of Cape Cod, Massachusetts, is part of a team that runs OCEARCH, a nonprofit global shark-tracking project that uses four different tagging technologies to create a three-dimensional image of a shark's activities. OCEARCH is hoping to develop successful conservation and management strategies by studying shark habits in more granular detail.
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