Great White Shark Makes Way Into New Jersey Waters

BRIGANTINE, N.J. (CBSNewYork/AP) -- She's back.

Mary Lee, the 3,456-pound female great white shark whose movements are tracked online, has surfaced off the New Jersey shore.

The shark has traveled almost 20,000 miles since she was tagged with an electronic tracker off Cape Cod, Massachusetts, in 2012 by OCEARCH. The nonprofit group researches sharks.

As CBS2's Alice Gainer reported, the tracker transmits a signal every time Mary Lee's dorsal fin breaks the water.

"I think the most exciting thing about what's going on with her moving northbound across Jersey right now is that she is just about to complete the first documented three-year full migratory loop of a North Atlantic white shark," Fisher said. "In that full migratory pattern is the mating site, the birthing site, and her full migratory range."

Mary Lee has been heading up the East Coast. She was off North and South Carolina last month.

By Friday morning, the tracker placed the 16-foot shark 10 to 15 miles off Brigantine.

"She's several miles off the beach and she seems to be moving with purpose," Chris Fisher, founder of OCEARCH, told 1010 WINS. "Over the last 24-hours she's traveled over 100 miles northbound; in the last three days she's moved 200 miles to the north."

"She's just doing her thing, trying to get back to Cape Cod to mate," he added.

In 2012, Fisher told CBS that they wanted to get a better a better understanding of the species.

"We don't know where they breed, we don't know where they feed, we don't know where they give birth. So until we figure that out we can't even put policy in place to protect em," he said.

As Hans Walter, a field scientist with the New York Aquarium, explained sharks are a conservation issue right now, and their populations have been threatened by over fishing. He tags sharks to learn more about them.

"Finding them can be a real challenge. They're elusive. They have very specific dietary preferences which don't include people," he explained.

A big question on many people's minds is, should beachgoers or swimmers be worried if a shark is in the area?

"Anyone whose swam in the ocean at any point in their life has swam with sharks. We all have," Walter said.

Beachgoers did not seem fazed.

"I'm not at all worried about sharks in this neighborhood," one said.

Walter said we just don't know that the sharks are there, because they haven't been tagged.

People can track Mary Lee at ocearch.org or on Twitter.

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