Mary Lee Followers: Check Out This Great White Close-Up

If you’re one of the nearly 75,000 people following @MaryLeeShark on Twitter and untold numbers following the great white’s travels up and down the East Coast, you’ve no doubt seen the tweets joking about meeting her in person.

But what would it be like to see a 16-foot great white up close -- especially in the water?

A Florida diver has video of his encounter with one.

John Dickinson and his wife were spear-fishing for cobia in about 130 feet of water near Jupiter, Fla., when a 16-foot great white caught his attention, WPTV reported. He wasted no time in capturing the sight on video, which he later posted to YouTube. Read more on his encounter on the St. Pete Patch.

Mary Lee hasn’t had a satellite ping since Wednesday, according to the OCEARCH Shark Tracker, so the exact whereabouts of the nearly 3,500-pound great white are uncertain. But she has been in the New Jersey-Delaware-Maryland area for the last couple of weeks.

Mary Lee’s travels have garnered attention in part because of a Twitter account that was set up to answer inquiries and tweet about her locations. The account answers questions as diverse as how she got her name (Mary Lee is named for the mother of Chris Fischer, an OCEARCH researcher) and what she had to eat. Part of the account’s popularity is attributable to a certain amount of snark that clearly delights followers.

The shark is one of more than 100 sharks around the world being tracked by OCEARCH, a nonprofit organization dedicated to shark research. She has traveled almost 20,000 miles since she was first tagged off Cape Cod in September 2012, according to OCEARCH.

The purpose of the OCEARCH tagging is to help scientists gather data about various sharks. Its projects use SPOT tags -- Smart Position and Temperature, which are the only devices capable of real-time tracking of fine and broad scale movement, anywhere in the world, according to the organization.

If you want to follow Mary Lee or any of the apex predators OCEARCH has tagged around the world, visit the Shark Tracker page here.