Posted on 08/06/2021 1:05:10 PM PDT by Capt. Tom
New Englanders can expect to have a bigger than ever white shark news season ahead in 2021.
Two of the reasons being the existing numbers of seal and white sharks will continue to grow and spread throughout New England, and that will remain unabated, because both species are federally protected, and both are still thriving.
Another reason is at the end of 2020 a group of biologists formed a new white shark consortium. So, you can expect more information to be coming from this expanded group of shark biologists.
The newly formed consortium consists of the original two groups, the Massachusetts Division Of Marine Fisheries and the Atlantic White Shark Conservancy.
The additional new consortium groups are: Maine Department of Maine Resources, the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management, the New Hampshire Department of Natural and Cultural Resources, the University of Massachusetts Amherst, the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, School for Marine science and technology, the New England Aquarium, Arizona State University, the Atlantic White Shark Institute, the NOAA Fisheries Apex Predator program, and Fisheries and Oceans Canada.
Today there are so many white sharks in New England waters, the sharks are now having an effect on ocean beach going activities, and many people have a fear of white sharks leftover from seeing the “Jaws” movie.
Some shark history Let’s take a look at the shark/seal relationship in New England.
The seals were culled in Maine and Massachusetts by paying a bounty on them from 1888 to 1962. Seals are the preferred meal for the white sharks.
White sharks were kept at low numbers in New England by killing them for their jaws and meat. Their jaws could be kept as trophies, or sold for thousands of dollars, and the meat could also be sold or eaten by the citizenry.
In New England, white sharks and seals were few and far between – that is, until the last 15 years, when the white shark and seal species greatly increased.
So, why are there so many sharks and seals here now? What happened?
Basically, it is the result of two federal protection Laws.
The federal Marine Mammal Protection Act gave protection to seals in 1972; another federal law in 1997 gave protection to the white sharks.
In 2005 Massachusetts also protected white sharks in state waters by passing regulations in the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries. Other coastal states have also given similar protection to white sharks. So now white sharks can come very close to shore without ending up “dead on the dock.”
Here is how the white shark expansion and tagging got started in Massachusetts.
In 2004 shark biologists Greg Skomal and John Chisholm, both with the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries (MDMF), tagged a white shark called "Gretel" that got stranded in a lagoon near Hadley Harbor, off Naushon Island, which is close to Woods Hole.
At about that time, and for the following years, signs of a potential shark problem began when gray seals, cut in half, or showing serious bite wounds began to come ashore on the easterly, ocean-side beaches of Truro, Wellfleet, Eastham, Orleans and Chatham.
Chisholm and other shark biologists inspected those seal carcasses. Some of those ravaged seals were identified by those biologists as being victims of white sharks.
Beachgoers on those Cape beaches started telling stories, and sending out e-mails about seeing seals being attacked close to shore by sharks or orcas or something else. Disturbing things were happening, and bathers were getting wary of going into the Cape’s ocean waters.
That kind of news that might affect tourism and Cape Cod property values was not well received by some of the Cape’s newspapers, businesses and property owners. But it was just the tip of the emerging white shark dilemma that continues to this day.
Aerial photos confirm sightings The undeniable photographic proof of white sharks at Cape Cod came on Labor Day weekend 2008, when tuna/swordfish spotter pilot Wayne Davis, returning to Cape Cods’ Chatham Airport, took photos of sharks near the shore.
Shark biologists used those photos to identify it as a white shark, Carcharodon carcharias.
Another pilot, George Breen, in 2009 spotted two sharks in that same area, and later that day took up state shark expert Skomal, senior biologist at the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries (he heads up the Massachusetts Shark Research Program), who identified those sharks off Chatham as white sharks.
Three days later, Skomal, along with Chisholm (now with the Anderson Cabot Center for Ocean Life at the New England Aqurium), were aboard the EZ Duzit with harpooner Billy Chaprales and his son Nick, with George Breen flying the spotter plane. They were able to get satellite tags into two white sharks off Chatham. Thus began one of the world’s most successful white shark tagging programs.
Massachusetts white shark taggers had so many tagging successes they out ran the limited tags and the money supplied by the state. Nobody expected that many white sharks to be in those waters.
In 2013, to help out with the underfunded shark tagging and research, the Atlantic White Shark Conservancy, donated the tagging boat, acoustic tags, spotter plane, and shark ping detection buoys.
AWSC changed part of the shark tagging team to John King's boat, and to spotter pilot Davis.
King’s tagging boat comes out on the ocean side of Chatham, and the limited distance the tagging boat can travel means initially no tagging of white sharks was done on the other side of Cape Cod, the Cape Cod Bay side; that would be on the Plymouth/Boston side – that is, until last year when a limited but successful tagging operation, in a different tagging boat, was also done on that westerly Cape Cod Bay side by MDMF’s Skomal.
To date about 230 white sharks have been tagged by Skomal and the AWSC. Approximately 180 acoustic tags are still active. The acoustically tagged white sharks from Cape Cod have been recorded on hydrophones along the East Coast from Canada to Florida.
Shark tag types There are many types of shark tags. The less expensive acoustic tags that send signals called “pings” that are recorded on hydrophones, are used on tagging local white sharks. Some of the batteries in those acoustic tags will last 10 years.
Hydrophones are underwater sound receivers suspended under anchored buoys placed strategically throughout the ocean by many different groups of marine researchers to receive signals (pings) from acoustic tags they placed on or inside various species, not just sharks. There are about 100 hydrophones in Massachusetts waters used for several ocean species, placed there by different groups, including harbor masters.
When an acoustic-tagged species gets within several hundred yards of a hydrophone, the hydrophone that gets pinged records the unique identification of the species involved, the date, and time of the ping.
It could be a ping from any individual of any ocean species tagged by different researchers, such as sharks, stripers, cod, etc. The ping will give an ID number that will identify the individual and what species is involved.
This pinging information should get shared, to help a network of different researchers studying dissimilar ocean species coastwise so they can better track their species’ travels. But that information is not always shared.
According to Skomal, only about 20% of Massachusetts white sharks have been tagged through 2020. Untagged white sharks greatly outnumber the acoustically tagged sharks, and untagged sharks cannot be recorded on any hydrophone.
Hydrophone buoys have to be retrieved to extract the recorded ping information, generally, on a monthly or longer basis in Massachusetts for white sharks. So, this type of shark information is after the fact. You may not know of the tagged shark ping until days or weeks after it occurred. It will depend on when the hydrophone is pulled.
That delayed information may be adequate for a shark biologist, but it is not fast enough for beachgoers who want instant notification.
Real time pinging If you need immediate ping reports you have to use real-time buoys. These specialized buoys transmit immediate ping information from tagged white sharks ashore to lifeguards and others via cell phone. The real time buoys cost about $15,000 apiece.
In the last few years there have been several incidents of white sharks attacking people in Massachusetts waters on both sides of Cape Cod.
One of those attacks was a 61 year old male victim attacked by a white shark off Long Nook Beach, in Truro, Cape Cod, on Aug. 15, 2018. He had a large blood loss, and was med-evacuated to a Boston Hospital where he underwent multiple surgeries and many blood transfusions and weeks of recuperation. That near fatal attack prompted people to say that eventually a fatality would happen. They didn't have to wait long. It happened a month later, about 4 miles south of this incident.
On Saturday, Sept. 15, 2018, a 26-year-old man from Revere was fatally attacked by a white shark. He was boogie-boarding off Cape Cod’s Newcomb Hollow Beach in Wellfleet when the attack occurred – the femoral artery was severed in his leg. He was pronounced dead when he reached the hospital on Cape Cod.
Newcomb Hollow Beach is one of the beaches last summer that got a real-time shark warning buoy.
These real-time buoys were installed off five beaches on Cape Cod in 2020. Four buoys in the Truro-Wellfleet ocean-side area, and one in Chatham. This gives the lifeguards and other agencies a quicker notice that a tagged white shark is in the area, and allows a prompt warning to bathers to get out of the water.
Those real-time buoys at the beaches in Wellfleet and Truro got plenty of tagged shark pings last summer, and they should get plenty of pings this summer.
Throughout New England, shark buoys are put out in late spring and brought ashore in December to avoid damage or loss by winter storms.
Prior to that 2018 fatal attack, the last fatal shark attack in Massachusetts occurred at Hollywood beach, Mattapoisett, on July, 25, 1936, when a 16-year-old boy from the Dorchester section of Boston was attacked while swimming with a friend. He died that night in St. Luke’s Hospital, New Bedford.
After interviewing witnesses, the shark involved was identified by Hugh Smith, former director of the U.S. Bureau of Fisheries as a “man-eater,” Carcharodon carcharias. “Man-eater” was the common name at that time for a white shark.
On Monday, July 27, 2020, a 63-year-old woman from New York City was swimming with her daughter off the shore of Bailey Island, Maine, when she was killed by a white shark.
One of the reactions to this fatal attack is the State of Maine is going to cooperate with Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries, and the Atlantic White Shark Conservancy, and the newly formed consortium. The Maine DMR has already in 2021 installed 32 hydrophone buoys along the Maine coast to detect tagged white sharks.
Maine, immediately after the fatal attack last summer, put out 11 hydrophone receivers, and got 14 different tagged white sharks to ping them. They should get a lot more shark pings this year.
Many Massachusetts coastal politicians, police, harbor masters, shark researchers and medical personnel have taken steps to try to address these increasing shark-related problems involving people.
Shark warning signs have been posted at vulnerable beaches in New England. Some vulnerable Cape Cod towns have been utilizing additional solutions such as flying drones to spot sharks, installing real- time shark alert buoys, making medical supplies available at certain beaches, installing direct alarm systems for seeking medical aid, improving the area cell phone coverage, and offering “stop the bleed” medical instructions to the public. The town of Eastham on Cape Cod, has a surf boat equipped with rescue gear.
Federally protected seals and white sharks are not going away. White sharks and seals are long-living species. Gray seals in the wild live about 30 years, and there are now about 50,000 gray seals in Massachusetts waters and spreading out. White sharks, Carcharodon carcharias, live as long as 70 years.
With all the biologists in the new consortium, and others now getting involved with the white sharks, expect a lot of New England white shark news during the shark season of 2021, which is already underway and will last into December.
On a cautious note, remember: untagged white sharks can't ping real-time buoys.
And expect the white shark encounters in New England to continue, when we humans enter the white shark’s domain, which begins when the saltwater gets above our knees.
Coincidentally I got a text from a friend who was bringing in a porbeagle and asked me to come down and get some shark steaks, which I just did.
Also he sent me a film of a shark right here off Scituate, Mass, which I forwarded to the most knowledgeable white shark Id expert I know of; my friend John Chisholm. Here is this afternoons e-mail by John to me:
"Hi Capt Tom,
I’m up in Maine with spotty reception. I actually received reports of that shark thru Sharktivity and N Alert has been put up.
Thanks, John
So Freepers with sharktivity app can get info on that sighting.
As soon as I post this thread ,I will try to check on the sharktivity sighting off Scituate Mass..-Tom
must be one of those white supremacist sharks.
The summer of ‘01 was shark week too!
Whose there?
Candy gram…
White Sharks Matter:
when you’re in or near their territory.
We’ll keep close watch next time we go up to Lake Tahoe.
“White shark” season?
You mean the white supremacist season right?
Chuckle.
The problem with these types of federal regulations is they are brainless in that they cannot adapt to change. Put the seals and sharks and the rest under state game regulations with migratory provisions, like waterfowl.
Watch for Tessie.
wy69
I started another article and below is an excerpt from it, that touches on your statement.-Tom
Also when a white shark attacks a person it seems it is always portrayed as a case of mistaken identity. That mistaken identity line may be true in most cases; but to me it can’t be true in all cases.
Unless; there is something us humans have that makes us immune from a sample bite from a hungry white shark to determine if we are edible. I don't see any indication we have that type of immunity.
Probably we taste better than a surfboard, paddle board or Kayak, but hunger is still the best sauce, and a sample bite is the way for a hungry white shark to find out whether we are a suitable meal.
Oh the shark, babe
Has such teeth, dear
And he shows them
Pearly white
Just a jackknife
Has old Macheath, babe
And he keeps it
Out of sight
You know when that shark bites
With his teeth, babe
Scarlet billows
Start to spread...
Fortunately, there are no white sharks in the Great Lakes so we are safe here.
Lord i love my fresh water sea.
This reminded me of a Mark Rober (Former NASA employee who perfected the "Glitterbomb" to catch package thieves) video he did to see what would attract sharks.
Granted-this is supposed to be entertainment, and I get the impression the guy is a bit of a liberal squish, but...I liked the concept, so it was fun to watch.
(Here is the link: Mark Rober: Shark Attack Test- Human Blood vs. Fish Blood
He couldn't use human blood for obvious reasons, so he got five gallons of cow's blood, and because he couldn't figure how to get blood out of fish, he ended up simply putting the fish into a blender and getting five gallons of that. Then, as a control, he used five gallons of water to rule out sharks who might be simply attracted to the surfboard.
He put the five gallon containers with a pump that pumped out a very small quantity of the substance inside on top of in individual surfboard for each one, spaced them a few hundred yards apart tethered to the bottom, and began dispensing the contents, drop by drop.
To quantify the attraction to sharks, he deployed drones and they visualized the number of sharks attracted to each source and counted them.
The blended fish won hands down, which was no surprise to me, but I thought using blended whole fish "Bass-O-Matic" style as opposed to just fish blood, that it invalidated the experiment. I bet if they ground up the tissues and bones of a cow and fed that into the water, I would have attracted nearly as many.
Bottom line, If there is food in mammal form, be it seal, human, or cow, I have not a smidgen of doubt that opportunistic sharks would readily eat it.
I forgot to mention that the pulverized flesh of the fish probably, IMO, made it much more enticing than simple liquid blood from a cow.
Lol! Land Shark. That’s when SNL was actually funny.
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