Malibu Great White Shark Returns to the Ocean

A young great white shark captured near Marina del Rey in August and later sent to a holding pen in Malibu was released back into the wild Tuesday by a team with the Monterey Bay Aquarium.

The shark was released at about 1 p.m. in an area north of Santa Barbara, aquarium officials said in a statement.

"The transport and release went very well," said Manny Ezcurra, the aquarium's associate curator of sharks. "The shark swam off looking strong and very relaxed as he swam. He circled the boat a couple of times and then we lost sight of him."

The 4-foot-7-inch, 43-pound shark was spotted Aug. 18 just off the Marina del Rey breakwater and was collected by aquarium staff with the help of a commercial fishing crew using a purse seine net. It was sent to a 4-million-gallon ocean holding pen off Paradise Cove in Malibu, where it remained for about two weeks before .

The shark gained almost nine pounds and grew two inches during its 55-day stay at the aquarium.

The shark was released with two electronic tags, which was a first for the aquarium's research program. One tag will track its movement in the wild for the next 180 days, then it will pop up to the ocean's surface and transmit data via satellite.

A second tag was implanted by Chris Lowe with the Shark Lab at Cal State Long Beach. The acoustic tag has a five-year battery that will report each time the shark swims past a network of monitoring buoys in Southern California and Baja California.

Aquarium officials said they hope the data will provide information about the shark's travel pattern as it matures. The information could help wildlife agencies protect young great whites.

Since 2002, the aquarium and its research partners have placed 46 tracking tags and eight acoustic tags on young great whites.