Researchers Track Great White Shark Near Jersey Shore

July 4, 2019, 1:15 p.m.

The aquatic wonder named "Miss May" was said to be swimming on Wednesday morning roughly 15 miles off the the coast between Ocean City and Sea Isle.

201907shark2.jpg

An 800-pound, 10-foot long great white shark was reported to be making its way up north along the New Jersey shoreline, right on cue for one of the most popular beach-going weekends of the summer.

Tagged by nonprofit group OCEARCH, the aquatic wonder named “Miss May” was said to be swimming on Wednesday morning roughly 15 miles off the coast between Ocean City and Sea Isle. The question, according to researchers, is whether she will head toward Cape Cod or Canada.

OCEARCH has been tracking the great white since February, when she was tagged off the coast of Florida. As part of its advocacy work, the group creates social media profiles for sharks. To date, Miss May has attracted more than 5,700 followers.

In New York, shark-spotting season got off to an early start this year, when another 10-foot great white was said to be cruising around the Long Island Sound.

But one day after OCEARCH reported receiving three pings around Greenwich, researchers said they weren't so sure after all. “He either was in the sound or he was never in the sound,” John Kanaly, an Ocearch spokesman, told the New York Times. “We have calculated that he wouldn’t have had time to go all the way around the island and back.”

Either way, the shark known as Cabot has since fled to Nova Scotia.

Although sharks stoke both fear and fascination, experts continue to remind people that the animals have no interest in humans. According to the Florida Museum of Natural History, there were only 66 cases of unprovoked shark attacks in 2018, of which only four were fatal. In Long Island Sound, the last recorded shark attack was in 1961.

Still, the experience in May suggested that for all the GPS advances in shark tracking, pings and Twitter updates may not be a substitute for good ol' fashioned actual sightings and encounters.

Case in point: NJ.com reported that on Sunday, a 14-year-old boy reeled in a nearly 7-foot-long sand tiger shark in Ocean County, New Jersey. The teenager, who was from Pottstown, Pennsylvania, was fishing in Beach Haven when he unexpectedly hooked a shark and found himself needing the assistance of at least three people to pull it in.

Even better, the incident and the thrashing specimen were captured all on video, complete with high-pitched shrieks from spectators.