Jane Stevens, at Hopkins Marine Station, Pacific Grove, CA - In case you missed it, the white shark at the Monterey Bay Aquarium now lives in the Pacific Ocean again. He swam back into the Pacific yesterday at dawn, and the moment was caught by the aquarium's Tyson Rininger. The shark ended up in the aquarium after entangling in a fisherman's net on August 4, 2007. The fisherman alerted aquarium staff, who put him in a large ocean pen of Malibu, where he showed that he was healthy, and then put him on display at the aquarium on August 28.

In the 162 days that he lived in the Outer Bay exhibit, the baby white grew 11 inches -- to 5 feet, 10 inches -- and put on 72.5 pounds, to hit 140 pounds on the scales. He's still a youngster: if he escapes being caught (young white sharks have been caught and eaten or sold to restaurants), he can grow to 20 feet long and up to 5,000 pounds. Big.

He's wearing two satellite tags: a pop-up tag, which will release from him five months from now; and a SPOT tag (smart position or temperature transmitting tag) attached to his dorsal fin that sends a signal to a satellite every time he comes to the surface (Tyson also caught the photo below of the shark -- he circled at the surface for a while before disappearing.) The pop-up tag gathers information about his position, how deep he's diving, and the temperature of the water.

This is the third shark that the aquarium's released. The first one, a female, lived at the aquarium for 198 days in 2004-2005, and the second one was there for 137 days. No, 3 was released after it was "seen leaping out of the water", according to a story in the Monterey Herald. The aquarium will try to bring another young shark to the aquarium later this year. It's tagged 10 other young sharks as part of a research project to figure out where baby white sharks are born and spend the nine years of their youth before becoming sexually mature at about nine years old. You can find out more information about the research on the aquarium's site.