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Katherine, the tagged great white shark, returns to Florida

Though Katherine typically sticks to the deep end of the pool, she occasionally ventures rather close to shore -- alarmingly close if you're a surfer.

By Brooks Hays
Katherine is the most famous of the 47 great white sharks tracked by OSEARCH. Photo by OSEARCH.
Katherine is the most famous of the 47 great white sharks tracked by OSEARCH. Photo by OSEARCH.

ST. AUGUSTINE, Fla., Jan. 26 (UPI) -- In accordance with her seasonal migratory cycles -- up and down the coast, out to the open ocean and back to the shallows -- Katherine the great white shark is back south, just a few miles off the beaches of northern Florida.

The tagged great white, maybe the most famous shark on the Internet, has been making the rounds once again. After stalking the coast of Florida for much of last spring and summer, Katherine is once again in the waters of the Sunshine State.

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She spent the latter half of the summer and all of autumn in and around Cape Cod before winter storms pushed her out to sea. From the middle of the Atlantic, Katherine has made her way back to the coastal Southeast. She's now just a dozen or so miles off the coast of St. Augustine.

Quite the traveler, Katherine has logged more than 10,000 miles since was first tagged off the Massachusetts coast in August of 2013. Like a snowbird, Katherine is constantly trekking back and forth between the moderate winters of Florida and the cool summers of the Northeast.

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The female predator was only a juvenile when she was first caught and tagged, but she's since stretched out and filled in -- weighing more than 2,300 pounds and measuring 14 feet in length.

Though Katherine typically sticks to the deep end of the pool, she occasionally ventures rather close to shore -- alarmingly close if you're a surfer who enjoys offshore breaks. Last spring, she came within a mile of Vero Beach, Florida.

Katherine is one of 47 sharks tracked by nonprofit group OCEARCH. One of Katherine's fellow female great whites, Lydia, became the first shark to be tracked crossing the Atlantic last year. But it's Katherine who enjoys the most acclaim on the Web. Her popularity was blamed for crashing OSEARCH's servers last year.

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