October 9, 2014 — The first great white shark to be tracked in Cape Cod Bay likely spent the better part of a day or two in Wellfleet Harbor before heading toward the Upper Cape on Wednesday.
Katharine, a 2,300-pound, 14-foot-long great white, has traveled more than 8,100 miles since she was fitted with three electronic tracking devices by shark researcher Greg Skomal and the crew of the research vessel Ocearch off Chatham in August 2013.
A sophisticated tag that broadcasts her location when she surfaces "pinged" three times in the past two days, placing her within a few feet of the town pier Tuesday afternoon and in the middle of the harbor near Great Island by Wednesday afternoon.
Although there is a 2-mile margin of error in the actual location for these particular tags, Skomal, of the state Division of Marine Fisheries, said multiple signals coming from the same approximate location mean it is more likely than not that Katharine was in the harbor.
This summer, Skomal identified 56 individual great white sharks, tagging 15 of them, as part of a scientific study to determine the size of both the local population that comes each year to feast on Cape Cod seals and the greater population in the northwest Atlantic. With so many sharks gathered in the waters around the Monomoy islands off Chatham, Skomal said Katharine's move into Cape Cod Bay may be a sign that Chatham is becoming overcrowded by shark standards and some are exploring less crowded hunting grounds to the north and into the bay.
Read the full story at the Cape Cod Times