14-foot shark vanished from satellites a year ago. It mysteriously returned this week
One of the largest great white sharks ever tagged in the North Atlantic has made a mysterious return to satellite tracking after going missing a year ago off Charleston, South Carolina.
The 14-foot-2-inch shark, known as Katharine, began transmitting faint data this week from 200 miles off the Virginia-Carolina border, according to shark research agency OCEARCH.
She was 2,300 pounds when tagged 7 years ago off Cape Cod, and among the mysteries for researchers is how big she has grown since then, OCEARCH founder Chris Fischer told McClatchy News.
Katharine could be as much as 1,000 pounds heavier, he speculates.
“It’s been seven years. One of the things we don’t understand is the growth rate when they get to this size,” Fischer said in a phone interview.
“She’ll be bigger, significantly bigger and in particular, she’s much, much girthier. When they get over 12 feet, they begin to grow girth and body weight. The volume grows quite a bit. She’s probably a very robust, mature female white shark in her productive prime.”
The reappearance on satellite was a surprise to researchers, who expected the battery in Katharine’s tracker to die two years ago. It was at first suspected the new signals were a glitch, or “phantom ping,” OCEARCH says. But then three more faint pings were sent, and mapping revealed the signals were moving in a definable track, Fischer told McClatchy News.
Katharine, believed to be about 30 years old, is considered “a pioneer” among researchers, with 61,000 Twitter followers and a reputation for changing the way people feel about sharks, Fischer says. Her tracking helped prove great white sharks are predictable, with preferred feeding grounds, temperature sensitivity and migratory patterns along the East Coast into the Gulf of Mexico, he says.
“Before these sharks were tagged and tracked, the scenarios involved (the movie) ‘Jaws’ and terrible (bite) incidents. She put things into proper perspective, proving sharks are living among us, but they’re invisible, like a mountain lion. You know they are there but never see them,” Fischer says.
“We’ve been swimming among them our entire life and nothing happened. Once we started posting the tracking data, people started thinking differently about sharks, going from fear to fascination.”
This story was originally published April 10, 2020 at 7:15 AM with the headline "14-foot shark vanished from satellites a year ago. It mysteriously returned this week."