Great White Shark Mary Lee, Long Island Celeb, Goes Missing

It could be the end of a saga that captivated Long Islanders and dispelled years of "Jaws"-inspired shark fears.

Mary Lee, a 3,400-lb. great white shark who made international headlines as she frolicked off the coast of Long Island beginning in 2015, has gone missing, Chris Fischer, expedition leader and founder of OCEARCH, told Patch.

According to Fischer, Mary Lee last pinged in June off the Jersey Shore coast.

But, he said, the reasons for her disappearance are not suspected to be due to injury or harm but rather, just the passage of time.

"The batteries on her tag likely ran out," he said. "She's been tagged five and a half years now."

For Fischer, Mary Lee has been far more than just a massive shark — named after his mother, she has come to symbolize so much more.

Reflecting on if he thinks he'll ever see her again, Fischer said, "That would simply be a gift from Mary Lee or the ocean. If she happened to swim by while we working."

There is no way to track her down or find her again now, he said.

When asked if he'd miss the shark that has captivated hearts and sparked a tremendous uptick in education and enlightenment about sharks, Fischer was thoughtful.

"She ’s done so much. It’s hard to ask her to do any more," he said. "She was tagged and tracked for 5 years and in that time frame, no one ever saw her. She's 17' and 4,000 lbs. She's elusive and she stays away from people and things."

But her sheer presence has changed the entire landscape in regard to research, Fischer said.

"Mary Lee has done more for sharks than any other sharks in the world," he said. "She’s undone what 'Jaws' did on the East Coast of the United States. She's the most famous real shark in history," he said. "She saved OCEARCH and she showed us the birthing site off Montauk."

He added, "It's been a privilege to be a part of her life for 5 years. I just hope she has a glorious rest of her days," a balance keeper in the Atlantic, he said. "She is a proper queen of the sea."

"She is a proper queen of the sea"

Mary Lee was a Twitter sensation since the summer of 2015.

The massive great white, who weighed in at 3,456 pounds and was 16-feet long when she was tagged in September 2012 off Cape Cod, has had more than 129,000 followers on Twitter.

She's traveled more than 39,975 miles and left a trail of education and pure joy in her wake.

Explaining why Mary Lee was named after his mother, Fischer said, “My parents have done so much. I was waiting and waiting for a special shark to name after her and this is truly the most historic and legendary fish I have ever been a part of and it set the tone for Cape Cod."

Mary Lee set the stage for other sharks making news.

Thanks to Mary Lee, Fischer said, researchers were able to tag great white shark pups at the first North Atlantic nursery for the fearsome predator in the waters off Montauk, and with the baby sharks tagged, more information than ever before is available to the public, who've taken to avidly following the sharks on social media.

Sharks tagged by Ocearch.org are pinging and revealing their locations via satellite.

According Fischer, an OCEARCH team was in the Montauk area last year because Mary Lee had moved into the area.

When she made that move in the New York-New Jersey area and was seen near Southampton and then Montauk, the thought was that she may have given birth, he said.

Then, after looking at a scientific paper authored by Jack Casey and Wes Pratt, and another by Tobey Curtis, shark researcher with the National Oceanic Atmospheric Fisheries Service,, the OCEARCH team caught nine pups, lifted them up onto the ship, and performed research projects including taking gas, blood and tissue samples.

New umbilical scars on the pups indicated that it was, indeed, a birthing site, Fischer said, with the pups 1 to 3 months old.

Now that the pups are being tracked, a whole new age of discovery has evolved, Fischer said. "Now we are watching the young of the year, watching them define the nursery of the great white shark."

That first year, he explained, is when the pups are most vulnerable. Once they're larger and older, they can avoid various types of gear and danger.

"They're the lions of the ocean, the balance keepers," he said.

Understanding how they move through the nursery helps ensure an abundance of the entire ecosystem and "an abundance of fish that our future children will eat," Fischer said.

The baby great whites off Montauk are balancing the in-shore system, chasing menhaden, mackerel and squid, "eating the weak, the dead and dying so the strong will survive. They're the balance keepers of the water here. When they grow up, they're the balance keepers of the whole North Atlantic," Fischer said.

Soothing shark fears

Fischer has a message for the many who've spent decades terrified by "Jaws."

The fear of sharks, he said, is "an irrational fear over something that doesn't statistically exist. You've got to realize, nothing has changed. These baby sharks have been there, off Montauk, for 400 million years. Nothing has changed. We just know now."

He added, "Movies of the past were able to leverage the fear of the unknown. What we are doing now is putting some facts behind the lives of sharks, replacing fear with facts and fascination."

Mary Lee, forever a legend

But no matter how many sharks follow, there are none that will mean as much as Mary Lee, forever a legacy, many believe.

According to OCEARCH, the nonprofit organization dedicated to shark research that tracks Mary Lee and about 100 other sharks around the world, she was not initially expected back to the East End in 2017 and was not expected to make a reappearance until 2018, when she was due to give birth again

But now that she's lost contact, her future may forever be a mystery to her legions of fans.

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Photo and video courtesy of OCEARCH