Great white shark seen at US beach on Memorial Day morning

A massive 10 foot 3 inch great white shark was spotted lurking in the waters off Jersey Shore on Memorial Day. 

The juvenile shark, named Penny, was first tabbed on April 23 – but she was spotted again on May 29, just before 7am right near the beach where holidaymakers are set to flock to.

The fish, which weighs a mammoth 522lbs, was spotted near Ocean City, swimming unnervingly close to the buoy line on Monday morning.

Penny is the 92nd white shark tagged in the Western North Atlantic by researchers Ocearch – and is a sizeable animal considering she is still classed as a young shark.

She is named after Salty Penny Canvas in Morehead City, NC, who the non-profit company say: ‘have helped our team with custom marine canvas projects that provide a more comfortable experience on the water and allow us to operate in tougher conditions.’ 

The massive female great white shark has been spotted lurking in the waters off Jersey Shore on Memorial Day (pictured: stock image)

Penny, the 10ft 3in great white shark, has been spotted close to the New Jersey shoreline

‘We’re grateful for the Penny family for their support of our research and can’t wait to see what Penny the shark teaches us.’ 

Researchers have warned Memorial Day beachgoers to be vigilant, as this time of year marks sharks’ annual migration from the Florida Keys into the Northeast, and then into Canada. 

On May 21, another juvenile shark named Frosty was pinged off the coast of Rhode Island. Frosty weighs 393 pounds and is 9 feet 2 inches long.

And on May 17, Keji, another sharkweighing almost 600 pounds and reaching over 9.5 feet in length, who pinged on May 17th. 

This sighting comes just days after a teenage girl was attacked by a shark while surfing off the coast of New Jersey. 

Maggie Drozdowski was surfing near 110th Street beach in Stone Harbor when a shark latched on to her foot and dragged her underwater. 

She managed to shake it off and survived the potentially fatal mauling. 

Penny has been spotted very close to the beaches in New Jersey on Monday morning

Holidaymakers are seen lounging on a beach in Ocean City, Jersey Shore – near the waters that the great white shark was pinged in

And in Florida, 13-year-old Ella Reed was sitting in shallow water with her friends at Fort Pierce Beach when a suspected six-foot long bull shark that had been swimming nearby sank its teeth into her side.

‘The shark itself was so powerful. That was what I felt the most because it was hitting my stomach really hard,’ she told Local 10 News. ‘It wouldn’t leave me alone, so I had to use my arm and use my hand too, so it got my arm and my finger.’ 

She punched the shark in the face to deter it from attacking her again and it swam off, but eventually the terrorizer came back, and she had to fend it off again. The teenager screamed out for her mother as the shark continued to circle her.

Her mother, who was not identified, was shocked to see her daughter ‘totally covered in blood pretty much from head to toe.’

In February, ‘fearless’ wildlife photographer Taylor Horton was engaged in a shark tagging expedition just off the coast of Hilton Head Island, South Carolina, when he hugged the animal as it popped its head out from the water.

In one shot he can be seen wielding a tagging instrument in one hand while wrapping his other arm around the dangerous fish.

Viewers were left in horror by the footage with one Facebook user writing ‘this makes my heart pound just watching it.’