One of the first great white sharks of the summer -- a female 14 feet long -- has been spotted off a Cape Cod beach in Massachusetts, officials say.
The Atlantic White Shark Conservancy, which has begun a multi-year effort to follow and study great white sharks, said the female dubbed "Ping" was spotted near Nauset Beach in Orleans.
"She was incredible, very, very slowly moving across the water," said conservancy scientist Cynthia Wigren said of the solitary shark.
Wigren and other researchers were aboard a boat that followed the female great white for an hour about a quarter of a mille off the beach. "It was easy to stay with her," she said.
Boats and planes have been used recently to look for and monitor great white sharks along the U.S. east coast as part of the study, in collaboration with Massachusetts' Division of Marine Fisheries.
Great white populations in the region have seen a dramatic rebound as a result of concerted efforts by both local and federal authorities to protect the sharks and their traditional prey, a report released by the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration said.
In recent years the New England coastline has seen more and more seals, researchers say, and where seals are found there are almost always sharks.
Humans need not worry, Wigren says, as shark attacks along the Eastern seaboard are rare with just a handful of fatal attacks in recorded history.
"Sharks do live in the ocean. So when you go out in the ocean you take the chance of sharing the same water is a shark," she says. "I think ... the biggest thing is to really pay attention to the signs and to listen to the lifeguards."
Sharks migrate great distances. In May, a great white was seen off Florida that had been tagged nine months earlier off Cape Cod.
Dubbed "Katherine," the shark had logged almost 4,000 miles since being tagged with a GPS device that was tracked by a satellite, scientists with the nonprofit research organization OCEARCH said.
Great white sharks are sometimes seen off the coast of Florida as the marine predators follow one of their prey, right whales, as the the whales' migrate from North Atlantic water to warmer southern climes.
Found in the coastal waters of every major ocean on Earth, great whites can reach 21 feet in length and weigh more than 7,000 pounds.
The population of the sharks along the eastern U.S. and Canadian coast is estimated at around 2,000, considered a healthy number, researchers say.
