New Jersey Shark: Captivated Internet Tracks Large Great White

A 3,456-pound great white shark named Mary Lee is fascinating Twitter with its progress along the New Jersey shore.

While there are always big sharks swimming in the ocean waters, it’s rare they can be tracked on social media. But Mary Lee is part of the research on great whites being done by OCEARCH, a nonprofit organization that tracks about 40 sharks worldwide.

But it’s Mary Lee’s path that has captivated the Internet. The shark even has a Twitter account, @MaryLeeShark, though it’s not affiliated with OCEARCH.

Mary Lee was tagged in 2012 and since then has traversed about 20,000 miles in the ocean.

“Over the last month, Mary Lee has made steady progress northward up the East Coast of the United States,” wrote The Press of Atlantic City. “In early April, the 16-foot long shark was off North and South Carolina.”

i did a project on @MaryLeeShark at the beginning of the school year... we've been following each other ever since. shes my favorite shark 😁

— Rich Homie Hahn (@Hahn904) May 7, 2015

With so many tweeting about Mary Lee, The Christian Science Monitor pointed out that social media can help sharks seem less scary.

“The ultimate goal is to replace fear with fascination and curiosity,” OCEARCH President Chris Berger told the Monitor.

OCEARCH founder Chris Fischer envisioned collecting tracking data that’s never been collected before, and then putting that online for anyone to use, taking an open-source approach to dealing with the fear about sharks, the Monitor reported.

Whether the fascination with Mary Lee is actually translating to less shark fear, it’s certainly making OCEARCH and Mary Lee popular.

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