230-pound shark pays visit to southeast Texas ahead of Super Bowl
HOUSTON (KTRK) -- Officials expect more than 100,000 people to flood into Houston for Super Bowl 51, but one unexpected visitor is also approaching southeast Texas: a mako shark named Harvey.
According to tracking data from shark research and conservation organization OCEARCH, 8-foot, 230-pound Harvey is currently off of the coast of Corpus Christi, slowly swimming just a few hundred miles from Houston -- because who could resist getting in on the Super Bowl festivities?
OCEARCH has organized expeditions in which scientists to affix small tracking devices -- known in the science community as tags -- to dozens of sharks around the world.
As the tagged sharks approach the ocean's surface, their transmitters phone home, sending pings of location data that help scientists track shark migration patterns and better understand shark behavior.
Over the last two days, Harvey has pinged nearly a dozen times.
Since he was first tagged by Texas A&M University - Corpus Christi scientists in April 2016, he has traveled nearly 430 miles, swimming south into the Caribbean sea and back in less than a year.
All of the data collected by OCEARCH is open source -- shark enthusiasts can track dozens of sharks as they travel across the globe on the OCEARCH website.
Some of OCEARCH's highest-profile sharks have become social media stars in their own right, amassing tens of thousands of followers as they travel the globe:
