Posted on 06/19/2014 11:51:48 AM PDT by nickcarraway
In the past, it was hard for scientists to know much about great white sharks because they're too big to capture and study while they're alive. But scientists are figuring out more about the animals -- and this week, they've learned a shark they've named Katharine could be headed straight for the Mississippi Coast.
Katharine, a 2,300-pound, 14-foot-long great white, was tagged with a tracker off the coast of Cape Cod, Mass., in August. Whenever she swims to the surface and her fin leaves the water, it transmits a signal to scientists at the nonprofit research organization Ocearch to show where she is. Early Wednesday morning, she was just south of Panama City, Fla., and heading into the northern Gulf of Mexico near Mississippi and Alabama.
"She's getting close. These sharks move 100 miles a day, no problem. She could be anywhere near the beaches in less than a day," Osearch founder Chris Fischer said Wednesday afternoon. "We've heard in the past that there's been some great whites in the Gulf, but we're really just learning that for the first time now."
A great white shark named Betsy has also made her way into the Gulf, but her tracker last "pinged" in early June near the southernmost tip of Florida. Since then, she hasn't raised her fin from the water.
"Some of the sharks come up and put their fins out of the water more often than others," Fischer said. "Katharine is a real extrovert. She likes to be at the surface, so we get very regular updates. Betsy has only come up about once a month since she's been tagged, so she's a little more shy."
Katharine is about 20 years old, and researchers aren't sure what's driving her so close to the Florida, Alabama and Mississippi coastlines.
"We're watching it unfold in real time together," Fischer said of Ocearch's shark-tracking website, which lets anyone with Internet access see where the tagged sharks were last pinged.
"We never dreamed those animals would be spending time in the waters there during this time of year," Fischer said. Scientists thought the sharks would spend summer months farther north in the Atlantic Ocean. "It really shows us how little we knew and how much we're learning right now."
Fischer said nothing has changed with the migration patterns of the sharks, it's just that scientists are now starting to figure them out.
"These sharks have been doing this for millions of years," Fischer said. "We just know for the first time.
"People shouldn't be afraid. The sharks have been making these moves forever."
Katharine, a 14-foot-long, 2,300-pound great white shark, is being tracked via satellite. She was in the Gulf of Mexico just south of the Florida coastline Wednesday morning. Read more here: http://www.sunherald.com/2014/06/18/5657583/great-white-shark-tracked-in-gulf.html#storylink=cpy
We’d only need to exterminate four or five species of sharks and there would never be another attack on a human. There would still be 295 species of the fricking things for “scientists” to “study”...
It’s all because of climate change/global warming/Bush/no immigration reform/guns/Tea Party/home schoolers/Republicans/FOX news/Rush/Levin/Beck/Hannity/pro lifers!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Evacuate, I say.
And here I thought it was a joke, that the great white was Haley the BIG white pos!
Yeah...'cause the oceans belong to humans for recreation...so lets wipe out some species that God put here for a reason.
LMAO.
Questions:
1. How much energy does it take to move a one-ton submerged object 100 miles? and
2. How can the shark eat that much fish along the way?
Wow. Just wow.
LOL...maybe Thad better watch out for Katherine!
Thandygram?
I think she’s allergic to pecans.
Not as much as you'd think, because its body is perfectly designed to do just that.
I’ve heard an oxygen tank in their mouth which is punctured with a .22 rifle shot is quite effective at neutralizing the threat.
I’m near Detroit. Should I be concerned?
Still following the slave ship routes after all these years....
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