When the reports came in last month that Mary Lee—the 16’ great white shark—was swimming a mere 10 miles off the coast of Bermuda, the accounts weren’t from fishermen or tourists. Instead, information about her whereabouts came courtesy of a state-of-the-art tracking device and an interactive website. You see, unlike most of the sharks in Bermuda’s waters, Mary Lee is being studied by Ocearch - a non-profit organization that is committed to using scientific research to support shark conservation.For many people, mention of the word “shark” conjures up images from the movie Jaws or more recent news stories of shark attacks off the coast of the United States or Australia. While it’s true that shark attacks do happen, you are statistically more likely to die from bees, wasps, dog bites, or snakes than from a shark. If you are in the U.S., your chances of being killed by lightning are 30 times greater than dying from a shark attack. Still, such statistics do little to assuage the fear that many people have of these oceanic predators.Unfortunately, this fear often leads to misplaced violence against sharks. With more than 100 million sharks killed every year by humans, it’s safe to say that sharks should be more afraid of us than we are of them. This is where Ocearch and Mary Lee can help. Ocearch provides researchers around the world with the unique opportunity to obtain data on the biology and health of great white sharks by catching, tagging, and monitoring individual sharks.Mary Lee and other tagged sharks are fitted with SPOT (Smart Position and Temperature) tags that record information about the water (e.g., salinity and depth) and transmit the data—as well as each shark’s GPS position—to a satellite when their dorsal fins break the surface. These data provide researchers with valuable insight into shark navigation and migration patterns, both of which are important considerations when developing conservation and management strategies.Other organizations, such as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the UK Shark Tagging Programme, use a variety of tags (e.g., acoustic tags, archival tags, etc.) in their research depending upon what data need to be collected and what type of shark is being tagged. Scientists and managers rely on the data from these tags to conduct population assessments, update species management plans, and learn about the geographic areas that are important for shark migration and reproduction.So, the next time you hear that Mary Lee (or another tagged shark) is swimming near Bermuda—instead of being afraid, think of all the valuable data they are collecting!