As we head into the holidays, Christmas songs stream over the radio and fill the air. But on Folly Beach, some very special guests over the last few days hearken another classic refrain: ba dum . . . ba dum . . . ba dum. You guessed it — great white sharks have made their way to Folly for the holidays.
At 6:45 on Tuesday morning, everyone’s favorite Lowcountry-frequenting great white shark, Mary Lee, pinged heading out to deeper waters way off the coast of Folly. As you may well know, Mary Lee is a bit of a local celebrity around here. Originally tagged in Cape Cod, she spends a fair deal of her “spare time” cruising Lowcountry waters. At 16-ft long and 3456 lbs, she’s not the kind of guest you forget.
Also dropping by to check out what all the Folly fuss is about was relative newcomer to the Ocearch tagged shark team, Yeti. An immature female great white, this lively lass was only just tagged on Oct. 7 in Nantucket and has been pinging up a storm every since. On Dec. 9, she pinged right off the coast of Folly. On Dec. 10, she pinged again as she passed between Seabrook and Edisto on her way out of town.
And that’s not all. Who else was in the area recently? Another immature female great white aptly given the name Grey Lady. This 12-ft 6-inch, 1372-lb girl — who, like Yeti, was originally tagged this fall in Nantucket — pinged off the coast of Georgia on Dec. 11. Based on her previous pings, Ocearch projects she would have cruised right by our coast in the last week or so as she made her sojourn further south.
We can’t say we blame these great white ladies for wanting to get a taste of Folly during the holidays. Perhaps they heard word of the Annual Folly Beach Christmas Parade this past Saturday which was naturally as quirky, joy-filled and, well, Folly-ish as ever.
If you’d like to wish our lovely great white visitors happy holidays, check out their Twitter profiles at @MaryLeeShark, @YETItheshark, and @GreyLadyShark. Be forewarned: these sassy gal sharks’ personalities are quite, ahem, biting.
