Great white shark named Katharine re-emerges after disappearing a year ago

A shark with her own worldwide social media following has re-emerged after evading detection for almost a year.

Katharine, a great white with more than 62,000 followers on Twitter, disappeared from radars in May 2019.

Despite public concern something sinister may have happened to the 4.2 metre shark, a satellite tracking system, which researchers previously used to follow her, detected something 320 kilometres off the coast of Virginia, Massachusetts earlier this month.

She is named after writer and poet Katharine Lee Bates, a Cape Cod native most famous for penning "America the Beautiful".

The shark is one of two with a social media account, operated by research group Ocearch.

When researchers couldn't find Katharine, they began an in-depth analysis of waters along the northwest Atlantic coast.

Scientists believe her tracker had just run out of batteries after being fitted seven years before they lost track of her.

While they have yet to physically see Katharine, they believe the 30-year-old will be much "bigger and girthier" than when she was last sighted, Ocearch founder Chris Fischer told the Miami Herald.

"She's probably a very robust, mature female white shark in her productive prime," he said.