This shark sure gets around

Maureen being tagged at the De Hoop Nature Reserve by scientists on board the RV Ocearch

Maureen being tagged at the De Hoop Nature Reserve by scientists on board the RV Ocearch

Published Mar 15, 2013

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Cape Town - It’s not only tourists who flock to the Cape for surf, sun and grub.

Over the course of Wednesday and on Thursday a great white shark swam more than 65km from Yzerfontein to Cape Town.

Dubbed Maureen, the large 4.4m shark took about 18 hours to get here, stopping and circling at feeding hot spots on the way.

She was tagged early last year and is one of many great whites being tracked by the Ocearch Global Shark Tracker.

Shark researcher Alison Kock, of the Save Our Seas Foundation, said this was normal behaviour for a great white. On Maureen’s last trip she swam from De Hoop to Mozambique, to Madagascar and back to South Africa.

Kock said the shark’s return to South African waters was “good” since she had been swimming outside protected waters for the past nine months, and had been in constant danger of being killed.

In 2004, in one of the largest ocean migrations recorded, a great white swam more than 22 000km from Gansbaai to Australia’s west coast and back.

Kock said sharks moved for two reasons: to find food or to mate, but Maureen was probably sexually immature. - Cape Argus

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