A 15-foot great white shark was caught Wednesday off Hilton Head, S.C., and named after a 14-year-old girl who was killed in a 2016 hit-and-run accident.
Capt. Chip Michalove of Outcast Sport Fishing tagged and released the adult female shark – his first white shark catch of 2020 – and afterward named her Grace.
“We’re naming her Grace after an aspiring marine biologist Grace Sulak [who] was killed in a hit-and-run May 7, 2016 on I-26,” Michalove wrote Thursday on Facebook. “The white truck that caused the accident was never found.”
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Sulak, a member of the Bluffton High School track team, was riding in a car with her best friend and her friend’s mother when their vehicle was run off the road by the driver of a white truck, who fled the scene.
Sulak was the only person killed in the accident, which remains under investigation.
Michalove, who tags white sharks that have migrated south after spending the summer off Cape Cod, is assisting in a long-term scientific project with Greg Skomal of the Massachusetts Department of Marine Fisheries and Megan Winton of the Atlantic White Shark Conservancy.
The movements of sharks tagged by the group can be followed via its “Sharktivity” app.
–Images showing the great white shark are courtesy of Chip Michalove. Image showing Grace Sulak in 2015 is courtesy of Kristen Sulak