Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/401545
S P O R T I N G C L A S S I C S 9 0 have starred in horror movies as oversized animatronics. Scientists, fishermen, and the general public all have differing opinions and perspectives about great white sharks. Some seek to study them, others want to catch them, and still others waver between the two extremes of blissful ignorance and obsessive fascination. M y fellow marine scientists and I know precious little about the behavior of great whites – how far they travel and how they reproduce. That's where we turn to Mary Lee. Ocearch's Global Shark Tracker program has tagged and monitored more than 40 great whites around the world and provides real-time migration updates, which is how Bob and I found out about Mary Lee's habit of paying semi-regular visits to our dive sites. Great whites rarely stay in one place for long, traveling hundreds of miles along the East Coast, across ocean basins and around South Africa and Madagascar. They range from cold temperate to warm tropical waters, following the migrations of seals and sea lions, and hunt their prey visually, using their dark gray backs to blend in with the surrounding water before rocketing toward the surface and launching their bodies completely into the air in a brute-force attack. As a lifelong sport fisherman, I also understand the appeal of great white sharks as perhaps the pinnacle of trophy fishing. After all, who wouldn't want to match wits, strength and cunning against one of the ocean's most feared apex predators? However, their vast migrations make it extremely difficult to manage a recreational fishery. Hooking a great white relies on being at the right place at the right time or stumbling across a nursery habitat. David McKendrick landed the world record great white, a 20-foot female, off Canada's Prince