522-Pound Great White Shark Pinged Off Jersey Shore On Memorial Day

OCEAN CITY, NJ - A great white shark was "pinged" swimming just off the coast of Ocean City early Monday morning, researchers said.

522-pound juvenile shark Penny’s tracker “pinged” near the Ocean City Beach at around 6:48 a.m., according to OCEARCH, an animal tracking research organization. You can track her current location here.

Penny currently measures at 10 feet and 3 inches long. Before making her way up to Ocean City, she was first pinged on April 24 off the coast of Ocracoke in North Carolina and May 15 off the coast of Chincoteague in Virginia.

OCEARCH experts are currently tracking the migration of white sharks like Penny as they head north for the summer. Many white sharks spend time in the area of Outer Banks, North Carolina, before they go north, and researchers hope to find out when and where they mate.

Last year, a string of sharks were pinged near the Garden State, including Tancook, a 9-foot, 7-inch juvenile white shark, located off the coast of Atlantic City on May 4, as well as Ironbound, a 1,000-pound shark. A 12-foot great white shark was also seen less than a mile off the coast of Townsends Inlet near Sea Isle City on June 4, according to the U.S. Coast Guard.

Factors like warming ocean temperatures in recent years have prompted an increase in shark activity and expanded northward migration patterns in areas along the New Jersey coast, experts say.

But the chances of attacks are still slim: per the International Shark Attack file, there were a total of 57 unprovoked shark bites in 2022, which mostly occurred in the U.S. and Australia. Five attacks in 2022 were fatal, down from nine deaths in 2021.