White shark pups tagged, released off Long Island

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(OSEARCH/R. Snow)

A team of scientists on a shark expedition off Long Island this month tagged a pair of white shark pups and released them back into the Ocean off Montauk so they can be tracked and studied.

"This is an exciting marine conservation event right here in our New York seascape," Jon Forrest Dohlin, director of the Wildlife Conservation Society's New York Aquarium, said in a statement.

The OCEARCH scientists named the two sharks Montauk and Hudson. Montauk is a 50-pound, 4-foot female and Hudson is a 67-pound, 5-foot male.

"We've learned a lot about the adult sharks in recent years, but the pups are still a complete mystery," Tobey Curtis, lead scientist and Fisheries Manager at NOAA Fisheries said in a statement. "Tagging these baby white sharks will help us better understand how essential Long Island waters are for their survival."

The scientists are from Wildlife Conservation Society, NOAA Fisheries, South Hampton Schools, Florida Atlantic University, New Jersey Institute of Technology, and Stony Brook University. They collected blood samples, fin clips, parasites, and muscle samples.

You can track Montauk's movements on Global Shark Tracker. Each time her fin breaks the surface of the ocean, her tag transmits her location via satellite. The OCEARCH team also created a Twitter profile for Montauk, which you can follow for some scientists' humor.