GPS tracker gone haywire? Great white Mary Lee pings off Seaside after odd track
Mary Lee's track and location, denoted by the orange ball, Sunday morning.
The well-advertised Mary Lee has been tracking off the Jersey Shore for nearly two weeks, and on Sunday morning, she took an odd track.
The 16-foot, 3,456-pound great white shark, whose movements are tracked via GPS online by OCEARCH, a marine research organization, was shown in the northern Barnegat Bay.
But the track went through land in Ocean County’s northern barrier island. A similar track over land and in the Barnegat Bay happened in Nov. 2015.
At the time, OCEARCH said the ping, a location sent to a satellite when the dorsal fin breaks the surface, was low quality and accordingly a less accurate location.
As of 9:41 a.m. Sunday, Mary Lee was pinging a few miles off South Seaside Park, or just north of Island Beach State Park, and heading south.
Mary Lee became an internet sensation in 2015 after she appeared off the Jersey Shore. The shark has traveled tens of thousands of miles since being tagged in 2012.
17ft 4Klbs white shark @MaryLeeShark pings toward Belmar, #NJ! https://t.co/9riENG1R8m pic.twitter.com/WuBrqpcuU4
— OCEARCH (@OCEARCH) June 3, 2017
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