Nonprofit gets permit to tag Fla. great whites

A nonprofit group popular for tracking great white sharks and giving them Twitter personalities was approved this week to tag sharks in Florida waters.

The Utah-based OCEARCH, which operates the Global Shark Tracker website and app, has often tagged white sharks in waters off the Northeast, but the permit granted Wednesday by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission gives it approval to operate in waters off six North Florida counties.

Those counties include Brevard, Duval, Flagler, Nassau, St. Johns and Volusia.

According to Fish and Wildlife, OCEARCH has done work in Florida waters under a license granted to Mote Marine Laboratory and Aquarium in Sarasota, but this is the first time the group applied for a permit in its name.

OCEARCH fits sharks with GPS tracking devices that ping when the animal surfaces. The group, founded in 2007, says on its website it had done 27 expeditions worldwide as of December.

More than 200 sharks have been tagged, including 14-foot Katharine, 700-pound George and 12-foot Miss Costa, who have recently pinged east of Florida. George surfaced long enough Thursday morning to get a reading that showed him just north of Jacksonville. Katharine pinged Monday off of Fort Pierce.

In addition to white sharks, Tuesday’s permit allows OCEARCH to tag 11 other t ypes of shark, including bull, great hammerhead, longfin mako, tiger and oceanic whitetip.

L a s t w e e k , O C E A R C H announced a partnership with the private Jacksonville University, which has a marine science program on the St. Johns River.

T h r o u g h t h e p a r t n e r s h i p, OCEARCH will dock its specially designed vessel, M/V OCEARCH, in Jacksonville.

“I am ver y exc i t ed for t hi s new chapter for OCEARCH,” said founding chairman Chris Fischer in a news release. “The vision for OCEARCH was always to institutionalize it so it could live beyond any one individual.”

Tuesday’s one-year permit is valid through Feb. 13, 2018.