Pregnant whale shark tracked in the wild

From a story by Mark Davis in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

She was in Mexico, but abruptly headed east toward Florida. She vanished for a while, but surfaced again this June, back in Mexico — pregnant, and alone.

But she's no modern-day gypsy following highways to the next party. This female traveler is a whale shark, part of a population that scientists think may be the largest collection of the world's largest fish.

Scientists from the Mote Marine Laboratory and the Georgia Aquarium tagged her with a satellite tracking device in 2005 and charted her movements across the Gulf of Mexico to the Florida Straits. This year, she was back offshore at Holbox, Mexico, noticeably rounder than nearly a year earlier when the Rhincodon typus turned tail from the Yucatan Peninsula.