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Receiver Buoy off the coast of South of Children's Island, Marblehead. (Bryan Burns)

Oh buoy! Let’s find some sharks.

July 2, 2024 by Sophia Harris

The MH1 Marblehead Buoy was deployed on June 25. The buoy tracks great white sharks that swim within 200 yards of the receiver in order to be recorded.

To date, the buoy has reported 21 sightings of great white sharks off the coast of Marblehead. At the time of its installment, in 2016, it was the first receiver buoy in the North Shore to be a part of the Atlantic White Shark Conservancy network.

Bryan Burns started the Marblehead Shark Club in 2016 and has been educating children about marine life since then. 

He said it all started with getting funding for a receiver buoy supplied by the AWSC on Cape Cod. 

AWSC offers a tracking app called Sharktivity. Data is collected from many sources, including its buoy array, spotter plane, and app-user reportings of in-person sightings of great white sharks in the area, the MH1 receiver’s website states.

Friends of Marblehead Public Schools helped fund the $3,000 buoy and Rich Jordan, the founder of Jordan’s Marine, helped place it.

“Jordans is extremely supportive in what we do, including helping us put the receiver in position every spring,” Burns said.

He said he uses the buoy to help educate the children about the great white shark population. One of the largest sharks the buoy has tracked is Marianne. She passed the buoy in 2017, and at that time was 16 feet long and weighed 2,800 pounds. Two other sharks, Gillie and Cool Beans, visited Marblehead in 2018. 

Burns said Marianne has gotten larger since then.

“She’s probably 17 to 18 feet by now. That’s a really big fish,” Burns said.

He said the students in the Shark Club built a life-size replica of her at 14 feet. 

Burns has had many speakers come to the Shark Club to talk about their professional experience, including AWSC Education Director Marianne Walsh. She is also who Marianne the shark is named after.

She said when the Shark Club first formed, its members reached out to the AWSC and said they were looking for some educational programming for the students. She visited the charter school and held educational programming for the students so that they could learn more about the buoy and understand its importance.

Walsh said one of the goals of her programming is to “really generate awareness” about great white sharks.

“We also want to change the perception of sharks. We want people to understand their role in our ecosystem, and how they play a critically important role in the ocean environment,” Walsh said. 

The Shark Club will continue this fall. Burns holds one meeting each week for 45 minutes.

For more information, visit Marbleheadshark.com 

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