Great white shark tracked to Florida coast

By Anne Glover

Her name is Katharine and she's 14 feet long and weighs more than a ton. She's been causing a bit of stir on Florida's east coast with a sighting off Key Largo on May 19 after she swam past Fort Lauderdale and Miami.

Now she appears to be heading through the Straits of Florida and into the Gulf of Mexico, possibly toward Tampa Bay. She could even hook up with Betsy, another behemoth who's hanging out off the coast of Sarasota right now.

Don't freak out, but these are two great white sharks. And researchers think they could hold the key to protecting the world's oceans.

They were tagged within a week of each other off the coast of Cape Cod in August by researchers from OCEARCH. The organization's mission is to use technology to solve the puzzle of multiyear migrations to great white shark nurseries so that scientists can protect them, said founding chairman and expedition leader Chris Fischer. Mote Marine Laboratory's Center for Shark Research in Sarasota is one of the organization's partners.

Partnering with world-class fishermen and researchers, they devised a way to catch the huge sharks, test them, tag them and release them without injury, he said. Now their movements are tracked on OCEARCH.org, which updates every 30 minutes.