OCEARCH tags Miss May, a 10-foot great white shark, off Jacksonville coast (2024)

FERNANDINA BEACH— Sporting a telltale wound on her tail fin, the 10-foot great white shark huntsfor prey acrossher winter grounds off the Jacksonville coastline, cloaked deep within her secretive aquatic world.

Researchers aboard the vessel M/V OCEARCH hope thiselusive apex predator will help solve scientific mysteries surrounding her species. About an hour before sunset Friday, theycaptured, studied and released thegreat white shark, outfitting her with a trio of tracking transmitters.

And they gave her a name: Miss May.

OCEARCH is in the early days of Expedition NASFA (Northwest Atlantic Shared Foraging Area), the nonprofit’s 34th shark tagging expedition. Miss May was tagged roughly 40 miles offshore from Mayport,a fishing village on the St. Johns River in Jacksonville.

“Something happened to Miss May. A bigger shark bit off —or she got wrapped in a longline or something —the top of her tail fin was not there. She’s had a rough go. It looked like the wound was a few weeks old," said Chris Fischer, founding chairman and expedition leader.

"She’ll be a very easy shark to identify with a glance, if it’s ever seen again," he said.

Miss Maywas named for Mayport. City officials areworking with the University of Jacksonville to create a permanent Mayport home berth for OCEARCH, including offices and a shark research center open to the public. Today, the boat's hailing port is Park City, Utah.

Fischer hopes the Mayport facilities open within the next two years.

What's more, earlier in the day Friday, OCEARCH tagged and released Lando, a 10-foot mature male tiger shark. SeaWorld Orlando chose the name as a "shout-out" tothe people of Orlando, Fischer said.

“That’s only the second time in our 34 expeditions where we’ve caught a tiger shark and a white shark in the same spot on the same day," he said.

The M/V OCEARCH departed Jacksonville on Feb. 10 to patrol a winter shark foraging "hot spot," which ranges west of the Gulf Stream from Cape Canaveral to North Carolina's Outer Banks. The ship will motor along theseAtlantic continental shelf waters through March 2, wrapping up in Savannah, Georgia.

OCEARCH hosted two FLORIDA TODAY journalists aboard the vessel Thursday, along with graduate students from Jacksonville University, Georgia Southern University and the University of North Florida.

The M/V OCEARCH is a 116-foot retired Bering Sea crab boat that was formerly named Arctic Eagle and featured on the Discovery television series "Deadliest Catch."

The steel vessel features a large hydraulic platform that can sink 8 feet underwater and lift 75,000-pound loads off the starboard side. OCEARCH researchers used the platform to haul Miss May and Lando out of the ocean for tagging and a quick series of scientific procedures.

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The boat is accompanied by a 27-foot Contender, which the fishing teamusesto set baited circle hooks floated by lines of orange buoys. The Contender ties to the port side of the research vessel.

Rather than using rods and reels, the fishing team "hand-lines" sharks using cable-reinforced leaders. When the team catches a shark, it uses the Contender to leadthe animal to the platform "kind of like walking a naughty puppy," said John Kanaly, OCEARCH community manager.

Thursday, the M/V OCEARCH anchored near the rock breakwall in about 30 feet of water off the Fernandina Beach coast, near Fort Clinch State Park. Pelicans roosted alongthe breakwall in the sunshine, and small jellyfish floated lazily off the stern.

That afternoon, crew members dumped heaps of Friday's shark bait— fluke, butterfish, ribbonfish, flounder and other aquatic species— onto a plastic tarp on the deck, thenloaded the bait into tubs. These fish weredying bycatch from a commercial shrimp boat.

After nightfall, Capt. Brett McBride motored about 35 miles offshore and dropped anchor to try to capitalize on a "weather window:" Friday's forecast called forcalm winds and temperatures in the 70s.

“(Miss May) just swam right up to the Contender and actually swam around it. They saw the shark once, and they just dropped the bait in front of it. The moment it picked up the bait, they had control of it —it was ready to come to the cradle probably within about sixminutes," Fischer recalled.

"It was a nice, thick 10-foot subadult female. It was all pretty quick, pretty standard when you’re dealing with fish in that 800- to 1,000-pound class. It was 13 minutes in the cradle and out, and all the science was done. It was real smooth. Beautiful time of the evening. And we were thrilled," he said.

"You come on a trip like this, you’re hoping just to get one. And to get one on maybe the fourth day fishing, it really takes a load off," he said.

In addition to satellite and acoustic tracking tags, Miss May andLando contributed to 17 scientific projects spearheaded by 26 scientists from 17 institutions, said Bryan Franks, Expedition NASFA's chief scientist.

"We have a number of projects that are utilizing the tissue and blood samples that we collect, to learn everything from stress responses to toxicology,"saidFranks, chatting in a folding chair on the deck. He is a Jacksonville University assistant professor and shark ecologist.

"We're looking at some of the contaminants that these sharks may have in their tissues, and those can be everything from heavy metals to some of the organic pollutants like DDT and flame retardants," Franks said.

Miss May even received an ultrasound.

"A key project is the reproductive biology of these animals. When are they mating? When are they getting pregnant? When and where are they gestating? How long they're gestating for? And lastly, where are they giving birth? The males and the females do seem to have different patterns to their movements,"he said.

Among the Expedition NASFA scientific projects:

• Microplastic exposure (Wildlife Conservation Society/New York Aquarium,Environment and Climate Change Canada, Georgia Aquarium)

• Prey identification usingfecal DNA (Wildlife Conservation Society/New York Aquarium,Georgia Aquarium)

• Ectoparasites (Auburn University)

• DNA sequence variation (University of Florida)

• Metal contaminants and oxidative stress (Jacksonville University)

The M/V OCEARCH's tackle bar doubles as a "floating laboratory" packed with industrial gear, tools, chemicals, medical equipment and supplies, and scientific apparatus.

"There's someother populations of white sharks in other areas of the world that have been studied for a lot longer, like out in California and in Australia and South Africa. But the North Atlantic white shark is just not as well-studied over the years," Franks said.

McBride has captained the M/V OCEARCH since the organization's 2007 debut. Asked about memorable shark stories, he citedApache, a monstrous 17-foot, 9-inch behemothcaptured in 2009 in hundreds of fathoms of water off Mexico's Guadalupe Island.Apache tipped the scales at perhaps 4,500 pounds.

"I named him after my dog. He was a really mottled shark, like splotchy, and a lot of scars on him. It looked like he had been fighting his whole life, and he had parasites in his mouth and teeth," McBride said.

"He was just angry. Big. Angry," he said.

Track Miss May and Lando

To follow the future travels of Miss May and Lando, visit ocearch.orgor downloadGlobal Shark Trackerin your mobile device's app store. The satellite trackers on their dorsal fins "ping" when they break the ocean surface.

Miss May pinged at 8:56 and 9:31 a.m. Saturday offshore east of Jacksonville Beach.

Neale is the South Brevard watchdog reporter at FLORIDA TODAY.

Contact Neale at 321-242-3638

or rneale@floridatoday.com.

Twitter: @RickNeale1

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