7 reasons to love Mary Lee, the superstar shark now lurking off the SC coast

Mary Lee is everything we’ve ever wanted in a shark and more.

She’s large and in-charge. The massive 16-foot great white shark weighs in at 3,500 pounds.

She’s an immensely fast swimmer. She’s swam whopping 34,000 miles over the past 4 years, averaging an impressive 119 miles a day. OCEARCH tagged Miss Mary Lee in September 2012, and has tracked her impressive adventures throughout the Atlantic — as far south as the Bahamas and as far north as the Massachusetts area.

And she’s wildly popular — arguably the internet’s favorite shark with more than 101,000 Twitter followers and 65,000 Facebook followers

Every year, like clockwork, Mary Lee has made her way to South Carolina coast in the fall, according to OCEARCH’s tracking.

And this week, she sparked excitement across the Carolinas when she pinged her location Wednesday morning roughly 20 miles off Hunting Island.

While visiting the area, Mary Lee was nice enough to take time out of her busy schedule to do an interview with the Island Packet and The Beaufort Gazette (we applaud her support for local media). Here’s what we learned about the sassy, sharp and apparently single shark swimming in Lowcountry waters this fall.

This story was originally published September 29, 2016 at 4:01 PM with the headline "7 reasons to love Mary Lee, the superstar shark now lurking off the SC coast."