Mental Floss

Mary Lee the Shark Has Her Own Popular Twitter Account

By Kate Horowitz

Terry Goss via Wikimedia Commons // CC-BY-SA 2.5
Terry Goss via Wikimedia Commons // CC-BY-SA 2.5 / Terry Goss via Wikimedia Commons // CC-BY-SA 2.5
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If you liked Left Shark, you’re going to love Mary Lee. With more than 90,000 followers, the 3,456-pound shark is one of Twitter’s most popular fish. 

Mary Lee is an East Coast girl, swimming up and down the Atlantic coast, generating updates as she goes. Each time she surfaces for a few seconds, a tracking device attached to her dorsal fin sends her coordinates to the OCEARCH Global Shark Tracker, and that data is shared on her Twitter page. Consider it the shark version of Foursquare.

OCEARCH researchers first tagged Mary Lee in 2012. Since then, she’s logged more than 20,000 miles, from Florida to Cape Cod and back. She made headlines in May 2015 when she stopped by New York City.     

OCEARCH president Chris Berger remembers the day he met Mary Lee. “She was majestic,” he told LiveScience. “There is an elegance about the way a very large shark like that moves in the water.”

Mary Lee may be special, but she isn’t alone. The Global Shark Tracker monitors the movement of more than 100 sharks, including Betsy, Julia, Lizzie, and Katharine, who tweets @Shark_Katharine. (“Misunderstood but sassy girl just tryin’ to get some fish,” reads her Twitter bio.)

Why Mary Lee? Berger named the 16-foot-long shark after his mother. “I was just waiting and waiting for a special shark to name after her,” he said to ABC News. “This truly was the most historic, legendary fish we’ve ever captured.” 

For more shark adventures, follow @MaryLeeShark on Twitter or visit the Global Shark Tracker.