A 10-Foot Great White Shark Is Swimming Just Off the North Carolina Coast

North Carolina is home to some spectacular beaches, and apparently, a 10-foot great white shark (Carcharodon carcharias) has taken a liking to these waters. The shark’s name is Miss May. While most sharks don’t have names, the ones tracked by OCEARCH do.

OCEARCH is a global nonprofit organization that studies and works to preserve our oceans’ sharks. By tagging and tracking these apex predators, researchers learn more each day about these elusive but critically important fish that help keep the ocean’s ecosystem in balance.

Miss May is one of the sharks that OCEARCH currently tracks. She was tagged on February 15, 2019, and was named after Mayport, Florida, the future home of OCEARCH, in a joint venture with Jacksonville University.

Miss May’s Travels

Since her initial tagging at Fernandina Beach, Florida, Miss May has been tracked over 15,885 miles of Atlantic Ocean water. Recently, Miss May has been hanging out off the coast of North Carolina.

OCEARCH tracks sharks through the ping data sent by the transmitters in each shark’s tag. A shark must come to the water’s surface and remain there for a minimum of 90 seconds. This allows the device to send three pings, which is what researchers need to locate the shark accurately.

OCEARCH received a ping from Miss May’s tracker off the coast of Baldhead Island in southern North Carolina on February 17, 2023. Her latest ping shows that she has moved a bit northward. The tracker pinged again on February 21, 2023, showing that she was very close to the coast of Cape Lookout National Lakeshore.

Miss May travels far north as the waters off of Massachusetts’ coast, but normally not until late summer. Her ping data shows that she frequents the waters of the Bay State in August. In February, she is content to patrol the waters of North Carolina, where she is right now.

The photo featured at the top of this post is © iStock.com/DigtialStorm