Posted on 08/12/2020 3:18:54 PM PDT by Capt. Tom
Real-time buoys to be placed off 3 beaches.
WELLFLEET — With little fanfare, shark detection technology on Cape Cod took a small step forward last weekend off Newcomb Hollow Beach, the site of last year’s fatal shark attack on bodyboarder Arthur Medici.
Cape Cod and regional public safety officials have been hoping for years to employ a kind of souped-up version of what they already have, an acoustic receiver attached to a buoy that can not only detect signals from tagged great white sharks but relay an instantaneous alert to lifeguards and beach administrators.
One such device was deployed off Newcomb Hollow on Saturday, state shark researcher Gregory Skomal said, and two more will be placed offshore next week, one at Head of the Meadow Beach in Truro and the other at Nauset Beach in Orleans
A total of 171 sharks have been tagged since 2009 with acoustic devices that broadcast a unique identifying signal that is picked up by a necklace of receivers attached to buoys off popular Cape beaches. The distance at which the receivers can detect shark signals depends on water clarity and other factors affecting underwater sound transmission, such as wave noise and vessel traffic, but Skomal estimates a shark passing within 330 to 660 feet of the buoy would be detected.
Wellfleet Beach Administrator Suzanne Grout Thomas said they were connected to the system Tuesday with email alerts about three sharks sent to her and to head lifeguards at town beaches. Skomal said towns would have to determine for themselves whether an alert merited closing a beach to swimming. Thomas said a shark detected in 20 feet of water, even at 300 feet from shore, could make it to shore fairly quickly and would result in a beach closure, ......
(Excerpt) Read more at capecodtimes.com ...
Beachgoers and bathers want immediate notification of the shark pings, so this is a step in that direction. But remember his will only detect TAGGED sharks , and untagged sharks greatly outnumber the tagged ones, and wont be detected.
There is on going work being done in South Arica and other places for real time shark detection buoys that will detect both tagged and untagged sharks near the buoy. These buoys when perfected to detect untagged sharks will of course cost much more money.
On Cape Cod the real time buoys will involve many beach closures since the sharks regularly swim by the real time buoys as a matter of course and are not interested in a meal.
So expect plenty of beach closures to swimming where these buoys are deployed. Pings and sightings are not the same. -Tom
Well I’ve deeply offended my ex friends from Cape Cod. They are a special breed of liberal lol.
This real time shark alert buoys on Cape Cod is one of the newer ones, and future improved shark detection buoys are presently being developed.- Tom
Here’s a question: The chances of a shark being tagged must be pretty low, right? And how do they tag a shark? Is it shot with an arrow from a boat?
i heard that shark detection system only works for sharks that have lasers ...
“Japanese submarine slammed two torpedoes into her side, Chief. We was comin’ back from the island of Tinian to Leyte. We’d just delivered the bomb. The Hiroshima bomb. Eleven hundred men went into the water. Vessel went down in 12 minutes.
Didn’t see the first shark for about a half-hour. Tiger. 13-footer. You know how you know that in the water, Chief? You can tell by lookin’ from the dorsal to the tail. What we didn’t know, was that our bomb mission was so secret, no distress signal had been sent. They didn’t even list us overdue for a week. Very first light, Chief, sharks come cruisin’ by, so we formed ourselves into tight groups. It was sorta like you see in the calendars, you know the infantry squares in the old calendars like the Battle of Waterloo and the idea was the shark come to the nearest man, that man he starts poundin’ and hollerin’ and sometimes that shark he go away… but sometimes he wouldn’t go away.
Sometimes that shark looks right at ya. Right into your eyes. And the thing about a shark is he’s got lifeless eyes. Black eyes. Like a doll’s eyes. When he comes at ya, he doesn’t even seem to be livin’… ’til he bites ya, and those black eyes roll over white and then… ah then you hear that terrible high-pitched screamin’. The ocean turns red, and despite all your poundin’ and your hollerin’ those sharks come in and… they rip you to pieces.
You know by the end of that first dawn, lost a hundred men. I don’t know how many sharks there were, maybe a thousand. I do know how many men, they averaged six an hour. Thursday mornin’, Chief, I bumped into a friend of mine, Herbie Robinson from Cleveland. Baseball player. Boson’s mate. I thought he was asleep. I reached over to wake him up. He bobbed up, down in the water, he was like a kinda top. Upended. Well, he’d been bitten in half below the waist.
At noon on the fifth day, a Lockheed Ventura swung in low and he spotted us, a young pilot, lot younger than Mr. Hooper here, anyway he spotted us and a few hours later a big ol’ fat PBY come down and started to pick us up. You know that was the time I was most frightened. Waitin’ for my turn. I’ll never put on a lifejacket again. So, eleven hundred men went into the water. 316 men come out, the sharks took the rest, June the 29th, 1945.
Anyway, we delivered the bomb.”
Great scene.
One of the last survivors of the Indianapolis lived In Benicia, Ca. ( my town for many years). Nice man v suited the high school each year to tell his story. Not sure if he is still alive
I asked a knowledgeable person directly involved in tagging Cape Cod's white sharks and he told me for every tagged shark, there are approx 3 untagged sharks in that area, at least
When the spotter pilot puts them on a targeted white shark they get close and put a hydrophone in the water and see if they can pick up a ping signal from a previously tagged white shark.
If no signal; they come up behind the shark and with a pole and a dart and transmitter attached, they stick the anchoring dart into the back of the shark alongside the middle of the dorsal fin, and pull the pole back out of the water.-Tom
Good to have a few extra minutes to find shelter before a sharknado touches down
I hope the system works, my skeptical self firgures it’s like Bengay on a bad knee. Feels better but your knee in still screwed up. Big whites eat meat. People are mostly meat. Viola a match!
Bass like frogs. Jitterbug lures look like frogs. Damn that rascal broke me off. Just saying
That was such a Sad story. And then the commander of that ship getting court martialed and later killing himself.
By comparison, i don’t have any problems.
| Hey, Cap'n, You've got the facts, Tom. Impressive. Sounds kind of tricky and exciting throwing dared poles at these sharks -- from a motorboat I guess. A bit of return to the good ole days of whaling and Captain Ahab! I tell you what, after 4 years in Georgia and four hours drive to the Ocean, I miss living close to the sea. On a Sunday in Yarmouth we used to get out in the sometimes bitter cold Spring day to dig up the quahogs. Beautiful exercise and an invigorating way to be out in Nature and hear the gulls cawing. We'd take our legal basketful to show the shellfish warden, jump in the car, and go home to shuck 'em and have them baked stuffed on the half-shell with a secret "Samurai" sauce my wife cooked up. I used to live on South Sea Avenue, the road to Sea Gull Beach. |
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Great true story, Moonman. Thanks for posting.
It's OK. That's the Flipper theme, so it's just a dolphin.
Because they go after the sharks in shallow water, where the shark can't go down deep, they just jab in the dart, without letting go of the pole.- Tom
So expect plenty of beach closures to swimming where these REAL TIME buoys are deployed. Pings and sightings are not the same. -Tom
Today, Sunday Aug 23, 2020 is an example of these beach closures caused by real time buoy PINGS, from TAGGED SHARKS-Tom
MA Sharks 🦈 @MA_Sharks · SHARK ALERT‼️ Newcomb Hollow, Wellfleet, is closed to swimming until 4:40 following a ping from the receiver.
Newcomb Hollow, Wellfleet - water closure continued through 3:05 following ping from receiver.
SHARK ALERT Newcomb Hollow, Wellfleet is closed to swimming until 2:22 following a ping from the receiver.
SHARK ALERT Newcomb Hollow, Wellfleet is closed to swimming until 1:05 following a ping from the receiver.
SHARK ALERT Maguire Landing is closed to swimming until 11:38 following a ping from the receiver. (Tom here) and there is an estimated 3 or more times as many UNTAGGED sharks around, than the TAGGED sharks, and the TAGGED SHARKS will give The PINGS on these REALTIME BUOYS. -Tom
We binge watched a lot of shark shows over the weekend.
They have been around since before the dinosaurs.
They ain’t going anywhere....................
I was at Jenness beach yesterday in Rye, NH.
I was surprised how many MA plated vehicles were there.
Maybe people from MA are coming up to NH beaches, instead of going to Cape Cod.
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