Great white tracked

A young white shark returned to the wild by the Monterey Bay Aquarium in February, has travelled past the southern tip of Baja California and is heading toward waters off the Mexican mainland, according to data from an electronic tracking tag attached to the animal.

The tag is delivering near real-time information on its position – information the public can track online, where his movements are updated and mapped almost on a daily basis.  

The male shark, which was released on February 5th after 162 days at the aquarium, is the first shark released from the Outer Bay exhibit to carry two different tracking tags. All three white sharks exhibited at the aquarium since 2004 have survived and thrived following their release.  

As with the two previous sharks, he carries one tag that logs his travels, including the water temperatures and depths and that tag is programmed to be released on July 2nd, when it will transmit its stored data via Argos satellite to researchers at the aquarium and at Stanford University’s Hopkins Marine Station in Pacific Grove. Stanford is the aquarium’s lead partner in the white shark research project.  

The second tag – deployed for the first time on a shark released from the aquarium – is a Smart Position-Only Tag (SPOT) that transmits the shark’s location via satellite when its dorsal fin breaks the surface of the water. This tag reports every two days.  

An updated map of its movements is posted on the Tagging of Pacific Predators (TOPP) website, www.topp.org, by following the Juvenile White Shark link on the Live Data page.