Famous shark returns to New Jersey area

POINT PLEASANT, NJ (FOX 5 NEWS) - A shark who's famous enough to have her own twitter account has returned to our area.

The 3,500 pound female known as Mary Lee has made a comeback.

The curator of Jenkinson's Aquarium in Point Pleasant, NJ, Laura Graziano has answered a lot of shark questions this time of year.

"Mary Lee's probably finding some good food and following it along here in New Jersey,” said Graziano.

Since the group OCearch tagged a shark, and named it "Mary Lee" near Cape Cod in 2012, the eastern seaboard's watched the 16 ft. Great White swim her way north in the spring and then south in the fall via the Ocearch app or the organization's website.

“It’s kind of scary that a huge great white shark is here, but it's also kind of cool that Mary lee is here,” said Keera Linsky, a beachgoer.

At last count, nearly 110,000 people followed Mary Lee on twitter, monitoring her progress toward their favorite beaches.

According to Graziano, “it's perfectly normal for something like a great white to be in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of New Jersey."

She reminds us that all kinds of sharks live in the waters off New Jersey, New York, and Connecticut all year ‘round.

We've only become more aware of them recently as groups like OCearch intended- Now that we can track the movements of some of them.

Mary Lee has swam more than 130 miles in the last 72. She last surfaced about 20 miles off the coast of Cape May.