Anne Bonny, a great white shark, returns to New Jersey coast in time for Thanksgiving
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Anne Bonny is back. Not the pirate, but a tagged great white shark of the same name was swimming in the deep water off the New Jersey coast as of late Sunday evening.
The female apex predator was tagged April 23 by OCEARCH when she was in the waters near Ocracoke, North Carolina. On her migration north she swam through the Chicken Canyon, a fishing ground off the coast here, before spending most of the summer hunting in the waters around Nova Scotia.
This time, she swam across the Hudson Canyon, another prolific fishing ground that starts about 85 miles off the coast of New Jersey. The Hudson is one of the submarine canyons on the continental shelf where the water depth drops off quickly. Due to warm water eddies breaking off from the Gulf Stream, the canyon draws in marine life large and small including whales, sharks and a variety of tuna.
Her latest "ping" was 10:21 p.m. Sunday night just inshore of the Toms Canyon, according to OCEARCH's global shark tracker, which uses satellite to track the shark's movements up and down the coast.
A ping occurs when the tag is above water long enough to be picked up by satellite.
She's not alone: More great white sharks spotted cruising off NJ coast as migration drive kicks in
Anne Bonny is a juvenile that weighed 475 pounds, and measured 9 feet, 3 inches when OCEARCH captured her briefly in the spring for research purposes. OCEACH is a nonprofit research group that has been studying great white sharks' behavior for over a decade off the eastern seaboard of the U.S. and Canada. To date, the group has tagged 92 great whites, eight short of its goal of 100 sharks.
OCEARCH's Western North Atlantic White Shark Study is one of if not the most comprehensive study of great white sharks in the world and includes a full health assessment of each shark, microbiological studies, movement, temperature and depth studies through the use of three different tags.
The study has shown that the great white sharks winter in the waters off the southeastern coast of the U.S. and migrate north to waters off New England and Canada in the summer.
Anne Bonny is just one of several sharks to have passed inshore of the canyons off the New Jersey coast during the fall migration south.
When Jersey Shore native Dan Radel is not reporting the news, you can find him in a college classroom where he is a history professor. Reach him @danielradelapp; 732-643-4072; dradel@gannettnj.com.
This article originally appeared on Asbury Park Press: Great white shark Anne Bonny returns to New Jersey shore
