MELBOURNE, Fla. – Hello, Yinzer.
At 8:23 a.m. Wednesday, the 6-foot, 10-inch-long mako shark pinged hundreds of miles off the coast of Melbourne, News 6 partner Florida Today reported. And it's the first time the 255-pound shark pinged here, according to its track record on Ocearch. Previous pings show Yinzer typically hangs out off the coast of North Carolina, Virginia and Massachusetts.
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Ocearch tweeted April 30, hours before the shark pinged: "While many of the white sharks we’re tracking are headed north, mako shark Yinzer is headed south. He’s moving into new territory we’ve never tracked him in before."
Yinzer was tagged in November 2017 off the coast of Cape Cod, Massachusetts, by researchers at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution aboard the MV Machaca, Ocearch says on its site. Its bio shows the male shark was named by the Mandella family, avid shark followers fluent in "Pittsburghese."
The mako shark was not the only shark to ping in Brevard this week.
A few days before May, Miss May made her presence known — her pings were hundreds of miles closer to Melbourne. The 10-foot-long great white shark surfaced off the coast on Tuesday.
"Since we tagged her a couple months ago, she has swum a huge lap around the southern half of the NASFA region," OCEARCH said on Twitter.
The 10-foot, 2-inch-long great white has been hanging around the Melbourne coast (miles and miles away, of course), pinging at 8:13 p.m. April 29, then 6:51 and 8:11 p.m. April 30. Before Miss May's ping in Melbourne, the shark pinged off the coast of Canaveral National Seashore near Scottsmoor at 6:21 p.m. April 26.
Before this week, it's been a while since Miss May pinged off the Space Coast. The shark last pinged here in February.
According to OCEARCH, the shark was tagged Feb. 15 off Fernandina Beach and named after Mayport. The shark advocacy group will eventually be based in Mayport at a joint Jacksonville University and OCEARCH facility.
For more on Yinzer, Miss May and other tagged creatures, visit ocearch.org.