Early Sunday morning we got our first hit from the satellite tag we attached to the juvenile white shark before releasing it from the Monterey Bay Aquarium on January 16. Here's a photo that Randy Wilder at the aquarium took when the shark swam back into the Pacific.

The radio signal was received by a NOAA polar orbiting weather satellite at around 3 a.m., about three hours after it released from the shark.

We were quite surprised to see that the signal came from the southern tip of the Baja Peninsula in Mexico near the resort town of Cabo San Lucas.

Our challenge now is to see if we can get down there and recover the tag while it’s still transmitting. The map here shows where the tag popped up and where it’s drifting as it transmits its position. Although it’s sending data from the two months it was attached to the shark, it’s only transmitting a small part of what it actually recorded. We’d love to retrieve it to download ALL the data.

But the battery depletes quickly while it’s transmitting. We have only about 12 days to find it before it runs out of juice. Once the battery dies, we can no longer use the satellites or our radio-wave seeking devices to find it.

Today, the tag continues to drift almost straight east. It is now about 80 miles from baja, but it is nearly half way across towards mainland Mexico. It seems to be heading straight for Mazatlan.

Stay tuned to see if we get the tag back! We’ll be posting every day until we get it…or it dies.