Katharine the great white shark. (Photo: OCEARCH) 
 
 MELBOURNE, Fla. -- Lurking in the depths, Katharine, a 2,300-pound great white shark, has prowled for prey for the past week off the Florida coast — fascinating and alarming local surfers and swimmers. 
 
 Katharine has a red satellite transmitter attached to her dorsal fin. The celebrity predator has generated media coverage across the Sunshine State as satellite "pings" track her trek along the East Coast. She even boasts her own Twitter handle, @Shark_Katharine, and more than 1,300 followers. 
 
 "Definitely not a common inhabitant to our local environment," said Jonathan Shenker, Florida Tech associate professor of biological sciences. "We've got a lot of toothy guys out there — but great whites aren't one of them. 
 
 "I'm just sitting here fascinated about her movements and watching what she'll do next. If she shows up off South Beach Miami, I'm sure you'll see a lot more media attention if she starts cruising the beaches." 
 
 FLORIDA TODAY: Where is Katharine now? 
 
 Katharine was captured and tagged Aug. 19 off of Cape Cod, Mass., by OCEARCH. The organization has tagged about 150 sharks since 2007, and its researchers are tracking about 40 transmitter-equipped great whites, tigers, hammerheads and other species off the Atlantic Coast, Africa and South America. 
 
 An immature female, Katharine measured 14-feet, 2-inches. She was named for Katharine Lee Bates, the Cape Cod songwriter who wrote "America the Beautiful," and her transmitter emits a signal when her dorsal fin breaks the water's surface. 
 
 Katherine passed New Smyrna Beach on Friday and approached Canaveral National Seashore by nightfall. 
 
 After cruising off Cape Canaveral this weekend, Katharine continued southward. Detected at 12:38 p.m. Sunday roughly 20 miles offshore from Cape Canaveral, she pinged again at 7:27 a.m. Monday, 20-plus miles offshore from Sebastian Inlet. 
 
 Then she struck for the inlet — pinging at 5:01 p.m. Monday about 4,000 feet offshore from Sebastian Inlet State Park. 
 
 From there, Katharine swam Tuesday to Port St. Lucie, her southernmost destination since she was tagged. Total distance traveled since that date: 3,686 miles. 
 
 Though spinner, blacktip and bull sharks are more-familiar species along the Space Coast, Katharine's appearance is not unusual, said George Burgess, director of the Florida Program for Shark Research at the University of Florida. 
 
 Between January and May, Burgess said, the carnivores pursue North Atlantic right whales as they migrate off the coasts of northeast Florida and southern Georgia. 
 
 "Not coincidentally, white sharks will happily munch on a sick or slow whale — or even better, a calf. They're along to move the Darwinian evolution forward," he said. 
 
 OCEARCH founder Chris Fischer labeled Katharine "a good pinger" who may yield significant scientific data in the coming months. 
 
 "She's in her prime. She's probably in her late teens, early 20s. We don't know whether she's sexually mature or not. It'll be really interesting to see if Katharine returns to Cape Cod later this summer. If she does, then she probably didn't get pregnant. If she does not return to Cape Cod by July, then she's likely pregnant," Fischer said. 
 
 Katharine's Twitter account is maintained by a member of OCEARCH's social media team. Recent first-person tweets included a reference to the SyFy movie "Sharknado," self-depreciating jokes about her weight, and directives to #ReplaceFearWithFacts. 
 
 Despite their ferocious man-eating reputation, no confirmed great white attacks on humans have occurred in Florida waters. Sharks kill about five people a year worldwide, Burgess said. 
 
 Neale also reports for Florida Today 
 
 Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/1lqVLF7 ||||| A tagged great white shark that spent much of last year in the Gulf of Mexico, fascinating and terrifying Internet users planning to vacation at Florida beaches, is again off the coast of the Sunshine State. 
 
 This time, though, the 2,300-pound fish is moving along the peninsula's Atlantic coast. 
 
 After spending the autumn months feasting off the coast of Cape Cod, the shark dubbed Katharine was pushed out of the area by cold temperatures. She tracked along the coasts of North Carolina and South Carolina before showing up near the Florida-Georgia state line Friday. 
 
 Katharine is outfitted with a special tag in her dorsal fin that sends a "ping" to a satellite whenever the tag breaches the surface. 
 
 Despite Katherine's size, she was immature when she was outfitted with the tag in August 2013 off the coast of Cape Cod. She has traveled more than 10,000 miles since she was tagged. 
 
 To follow Katharine's movements, visit www.ocearch.org/profile/katharine. 
 
 ************** 
 
 Todd Masson can be reached at tmasson@nola.com or 504.232.3054. 
 
 Follow @ TmassonFISH Tweet to @TmassonFISH ||||| 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. 
 
 Advertisement 
 
 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. 
 
 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. ||||| By Jamie Smith 
 
 Katharine the great white shark has returned to our waters. 
 
 She pinged twice over the weekend and on Monday morning, the tracker on the 2,300-hundred pound shark pinged off the coast of St. Augustine. 
 
 
 
 It appears Katharine is heading south. Action News met with Dr. Jim Gelsleichter, who runs the University of North Florida’s shark biology program. He was part of the team that joined Ocearch biologists tagging the great white named Katharine back in August 2013 near Cape Cod. 
 
 
 
 “Anytime a shark surfaces, it sends a signal to satellite. It's almost like GPS positioning,” Gelsleichter said. 
 
 Latest News Headlines from Action News 
 
 The tracking device allows scientists or anyone else to follow her movements in the water. It now shows the 2,300 pound great white, who's been here before, back in the waters off our beaches. 
 
 
 
 With this GPS technology, scientists are changing their opinion about where these big sharks spend most of their time. 
 
 
 
 “We used to think white shark was primarily an ocean species. Now our view is it's primarily a coastal species that moves off shore periodically,” Gelsleichter said. 
 
 
 
 Katharine was so close to shore she pinged just a few hundred yards off the beach at the Ponte Vedra Inn and Club at 12:46 p.m. on Saturday. 
 
 
 
 Some find that fact a bit disconcerting. 
 
 
 
 “I'll swim in there. But I don't want to swim with the sharks,” said Mary Dunlap. 
 
 
 
 But Gelsleichter said there's no cause for alarm. 
 
 
 
 “There's never been a reported attack of a bather in Florida or by a diver by a white shark,” he said. 
 
 For Action News on the go, sign up for Action News Mobile & Email alerts
– She is arguably the most famous shark in America, but Mary Lee has gone silent. After being tagged with a transmitter by research organization Ocearch back in 2012 off the coast of Cape Cod, Mary Lee gained a legion of loyal followers tracking her ocean journeys. (She has nearly 130,000 Twitter followers.) However, no ping has been registered since June, reports the Post and Courier of Charleston, SC. The good news is that this doesn't necessarily mean the end of Mary Lee: Chris Fischer of Ocearch tells Jacksonville.com that it's more likely the batteries in her transmitter, designed to last about five years, have finally given out. Fischer hopes to see Mary Lee again, but is OK if that never happens. “I feel like she’s done so much, it’s hard to ask for anything else,” he says. “For any individual shark, she’s undone more of the damage from Jaws than any shark in history, and she’s the most famous shark in history.” Mary Lee was 40 or 50 years old when first tagged, so Fischer figures she has another 20 years of life. Meanwhile, boaters and fishermen are being asked to keep an eye out, particularly off the coast of South Carolina. The 16-foot shark just happens to have a distinctive bite mark in her dorsal fin, raising hopes that if she is still swimming around out there, somebody will spot her.