HILTON HEAD ISLAND, S.C. — If there is any great white shark that could rise above Jaws’ acclaim and soften the apex predators’ infamy, it’d be LeeBeth.
Caught, tagged and released by Hilton Head Island Charter Captain Chip Michalove on Dec. 8, she’s been nothing short of extraordinary. The nearly 3,000 pound fish, lashed with seal scars, has cruised more than 5,200 miles since Michalove tagged her. More well-traveled than most, she’s visited three countries in a seven-month span.
The behemoth shark was given the moniker LeeBeth to honor Pastor Ed Young’s daughter who died in 2021 at the age of 34. Young has been on a handful of Michalove’s fishing trips and was part of the Dec. 8 team.
“She’s by far the best shark we’ve ever tagged,” said Michalove, who owns Outcast Sport Fishing. “And not only is she one of the largest, but she pings in almost every day on the average.”
When first reeled in, the great white, estimated to be in her mid-to-late 20s, sported four tags upon release. The tags send information to the Atlantic White Shark Conservancy that it uses for research purposes. Now, three remain, but it’s the SPOT (smart position and temperature) tag that’s clearly and continually tracked her journey.
From the coast of Hilton Head, LeeBeth swam around Florida, visited beaches in Mexico, turned around, cruised north of Nova Scotia and entered the Gulf of St. Lawrence. She was partial to Tampa, spending about a month in the area. Michalove said there was something substantial holding her interest in the Gulf Coast city, likely a buffet of giant squid.
Her track that far west is record-breaking, but it isn’t haphazard.
“She knew exactly where she was going,” Michalove said, noting that there wasn’t much of a zigzag in her path.
Among the tagged sharks, LeeBeth tops the chart for number of pings emitted from her affixed SPOT tag, which transmits a series of signals to overhead satellites that track her real-time journey. The great white’s prolific pinging also revealed patterns. She’d ping several times a day when she would feed on the surface and then go quiet for a few days, relaxing in deeper waters.
Currently up north feeding on seals and in the backdrop of the Discovery Channel’s Shark Week, LeeBeth is still on the move. In Michalove’s opinion, her three-country journey beats any Shark Week story. Every state she’s traveled near, she’s “ruffled feathers,” giving her quite the following, Michalove said. He gets constant phone calls: “How big is she? Should we be concerned?”
But LeeBeth’s public real-time track will end soon.
The real-time SPOT tag could “stop any day now,” Michalove said, but it may hang tight for a few more weeks or months.
“She’s pinging so much that she’s burning up this little AA battery like crazy,” the charter captain said. “At some point, all the batteries are gonna die, and everything’s gonna come off of her. I hate that we’re gonna permanently lose her.”
One of the three remaining tags will be secure for the next seven years, however, it doesn’t provide instantaneous tracking. If Michalove’s wish came true, he and LeeBeth would meet to recharge her tag.
“I don’t think she’ll fall for it twice,” he said.
Want to track sharks? The Atlantic White Shark Conservancy and Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries’ “White Shark Logbook” is an online catalog of over 600 tagged and untagged Northwest Atlantic white sharks. It shows historic acoustic detection data from 2010 to 2022.
