A great white shark measuring more than 9 feet long and weighing 425 pounds visited the Jersey Shore around midnight Thursday.
The same shark was spotted southeast of Point Pleasant Beach around Thanksgiving last year, according to the New Jersey Press.
Researchers started tracking Anne Bonny after she was tagged in North Carolina in April 2023. The nonprofit group OCEARCH said the great white has travelled more than 7,700 miles since then.
She tends to stay along the Atlantic Ocean coastline, moving between South Carolina and Massachusetts.
NJ.com calls Anne Bonny, who’s named after an 18th century pirate, a juvenile female. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says great white sharks typically live to be in their 70s.
A much larger great white shark passed by New Jersey last week a little further out to see.
Scot, who like Anne Bonny wears a satellite-linked tracking tag on its fin, is 12 feet long and weighs more than 1,600 pounds. That apex predator travelled more than 16,000 miles since being tagged in September 2021. That has included a trip to the Florida Keys and a visit to Canada.
Shark population had been in decline for several decades, but according to OCEARCH, their numbers are on the rise once more.
“Sharks are coming back,” OCEARCH scientist Dr. Bob Hueter told CBS News in July 2023. “They’re not even probably close to what they were back in the 1940s and 1950s. But they are making a comeback.”
