Folks along the South Carolina coast are wishing that Mary Lee, a Great White Shark, would spend her Christmas season somewhere else.

According to information posted on www.ocearch.org, a sixteen foot, 3,456 pound female shark was tagged with a GPS tracking device off Cape Cod on September 17, 2012. Since then, she has traveled over ten thousand miles up and down the Atlantic coastline with stops near Bermuda in February and most recently, in the shallow waters of St. Helena Sound, south of Edisto Beach, SC.

Why so close to shore? The simple answer is…food. Like fishermen, Great Whites and other apex sharks find plenty to catch and eat along the South Carolina coastline. Because they are opportunistic feeders, their menu varies the same as the “catch of the day” at your favorite seafood restaurant. But anything dead or alive is fair game, including red drum, sting rays, skates, sea turtles, tarpon, dolphin, whales and sea birds. The good news, according www.wikipedia.org, is that “only a few sharks are dangerous to humans. Out of more than 568 shark species, only four have been involved in a significant number of fatal, unprovoked attacks on humans: the great white, the tiger, the bull and the oceanic white tip shark.”

Though seldom seen, sharks are frequent visitors to the beaches, inlets and backwater bays of South Carolina. Mary Lee’s short stay in St. Helena Sound has re-ignited fears of shark attacks in much the same way as the movie Jaws did in 1975. But, not everyone wants her to leave. Like Black Beard and the other pirates of old, she has become somewhat of a cult hero. What’s made her even more endearing to her growing list of admirers, are reports that suggest she might be expecting and will give live birth to approximately ten pups in the spring. Great white pups are about five feet long, weight about seventy five pounds when born and are equipped with a full set of teeth.

Until Mary Lee appeared on the scene, South Carolina’s most famous shark was a 1,780 pound tiger taken from the Cherry Grove Fishing Pier in North Myrtle Beach in 1964. It still shares the all tackle world record with another gargantuan shark taken from Australia. Other big sharks from South Carolina’s waters include a 588 pound hammerhead, a 477 pound bull shark and a big eye thresher that topped the scales at 406 pounds.

Great White Shark Facts:
* Favorite foods – sea lions and seals
* Top speed – 43 MPH
* Ancestry dates back 400 million years
* Live up to sixty years
* Enemies – Killer whales, humans, mercury pollution

Tips from Capt. Gus! - You can track Mary Lee: http://www.ocearch.org/tracker/

Hot Spots of the Week: The return of tens of thousands of seabirds is making it easier to locate schooling bass, perch, hybrids and the occasional striper. When birds are diving, Alabama rigs, buck tail jigs and spoons tossed into the fray are rewarding anglers with nice catches. In addition, crappie fishing is excellent around bridge pilings and submerged brush piles.

The water level on Lake Norman is about 3.2’ below full pond and is 3.1' below full on Mountain Island Lake. The surface water temperature is in the fifties in water not affected by power generation on Lake Norman.


Photo of 1,780 pound Tiger Shark taken at the Cherry Grove, SC fishing pier in 1964. Photo courtesy of the Cherry Grove Fishing Pier