Fans Freak as Famous Shark Returns to Florida

Welcome back, Katharine
By Arden Dier,  Newser Staff
Posted Jan 12, 2017 10:03 AM CST
Fans Freak as Famous Shark Returns to Florida
A juvenile male great white shark tagged by OCEARCH swims in Montauk, NY, on Aug. 23, 2016.   (Robert Snow/OCEARCH via AP)

One of the world's most famous sharks has returned to Florida to the delight of her 43,000 Twitter followers. The 14-foot-long great white, Katharine, tagged off Cape Cod by OCEARCH in 2013, stuck her dorsal fin out of the water Sunday long enough for her tracker to register her location off West Palm Beach, reports the News-Press. It was a homecoming of sorts, as Katharine spent much of the summer of 2014 off the Sunshine State and returned in January 2015 and again last May, per WFLA. "I was just down deep. Decided to pop up and say hello!" read a tweet from Katharine's account, which prompted bursts of excitement from the shark's enthusiastic fan base.

Great white sightings off Florida are actually quite rare, though three have been recorded in the last month. Two were spotted off Satellite Beach and Melbourne over eight days in December. Then a group of scuba divers spotted a 14-foot-long great white three miles off West Palm Beach on Jan. 1, reports the Treasure Coast Palm. Though that's close to Katharine's last known location, there's no evidence she was the shark spotted. The 2,300-pound shark hasn't been officially sighted since her tagging. Since surfacing, though, Katharine has used Twitter to complain about paparazzi following her around and poke fun at the "silly humans" who thought she was dead. (More Florida stories.)

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