OK, maybe no one but me will get the Dickie Goodman joke from 1975 in that headline....
In February, the Monterey Bay Aquarium released one of its most popular exhibits, a young great white shark, with a tracking device attached. The shark headed south, not an unknown pattern among great whites, but it surprised everyone with the alacrity of its journey. The animal has passed the southern tip of Baja and is still heading SE to the waters off Mexico. The shark has been making a net movement southward of over 43 km a day, which is very impressive to scientists who note it's undoubtedly not swimming in a straight line, but making the usual detours for hunting and whatever other reasons a shark detours. Why the creature is in such a rush is unknown, which reminds us that relatively little about these predators is known. Experiments like this, though, can help fill in some of the blank pages in the shark's scientific dossier.
Where is the shark today? See for yourself. Look up the "Juvenile White Shark" entry on
http://las.pfeg.noaa.gov/TOPP_recent/sp41_anm.html
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