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Cape Cod groups are looking to test out electronic shark deterrent technology this summer, including a nonprofit that is hoping to roll out a protective “virtual shark net.” Cape Cod Ocean Community Inc. — a nonprofit that formed after a man was killed by a shark in Cape waters three years ago — is working on shark surveillance testing projects this summer. “We’ve been thinking about shark barriers since Day One, ever since Arthur Medici died,” said Heather Doyle, a co-founder of the nonprofit organization. Ahead of this summer, which promises to be full of shark sightings as the great...

BOSTON (CBS) – It’s no secret that the great white sharks return to Outer Cape Cod every summer to feast on the seals that live there and for years now, scientists have been tagging and tracking the sharks, to learn about their behavior. Now, a consortium of scientists have compiled data that gave them some new insight into the sharks’ patterns. One aspect: the sharks come into very shallow water, and stay for a greater time than most people suspected.

Cape Cod, Mass. — What would seem to be the collegial world of local shark research has in fact become a simmering feud between competing factions, with some saying the public is the loser because the research is not keeping up with great white's growing incursions on our local waters. "We've never been shut out like this," said Chris Fischer, founder of OCEARCH, the research group that has been denied permits by the state for several years now. "What's happening here with sharks compared to the rest of the world is like it is in the dark ages." OCEARCH roams...

At least six pirate skeletons were recently discovered in a shipwreck off the coast of Cape Cod. The remains were unearthed from the wreck site of the Whydah, which sank near the town of Wellfleet in 1717, according to The Boston Globe. Investigators at the Whydah Pirate Museum said the skeletons were identified in several large concretions, or hard masses of minerals, from the wreck site. They are now being examined by a team of archeologists led by underwater explorer Barry Clifford, who discovered the Whydah in 1984, the museum said.

A shark attacked a seal close to the shore of Race Point Beach in Provincetown today.

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...

ORLEANS, Mass. — Numerous great white sharks have been spotted this week off the Massachusetts coast, often causing beaches to close as a precaution. A shark sighting was reported at Nauset Beach in Orleans around 9:30 a.m. Wednesday, according to a message relayed by the Sharktivity app from the Atlantic White Shark Conservancy. The water was closed to swimming for an hour as a precaution. Another sighting was reported in the same area Tuesday after a shark attacked a seal about 20 yards off the beach. Additional sightings were reported Monday and Tuesday near Chatham. Additionally, a possible sighting was...

July is here and “Jaws” reruns herald the return of white sharks to our waters, attracted by our ever-growing gray seal population. Over the winter, gray seals have — thanks in large measure to the protection afforded by the Marine Mammal Protection Act — further augmented their numbers. The “gray seal buffet” is once again open for business. But this season is, of course, unlike any in recent times. For the Cape and Islands, the coronavirus poses a far greater threat to the safety of its beachgoers and well-being of its economy than white sharks. But those threats are not...

Orleans Natural Resources Manager Nathan Sears said two shark attacks on seals have already been documented in the past couple of weeks; one at Nauset Beach, the town’s big oceanside beach, and one a couple of miles south at the first exit on the southern off-road trail system. Cape Cod Ocean Community co-founder Heather Doyle said the pilot network — which uses volunteer pilots who routinely fly over Cape Cod beaches to radio shark reports to people below who have received free radios supplied by her group — is bigger this year with more participants and municipal lifeguards in various...

Because of our menacing great white shark and the seal overpopulation dilemma, Cape Cod is in an ecological, public safety and economic crisis. The exploding seal population is a consequence of the federal Marine Mammal Protection Act, which allowed for the rapidly growing seal overpopulation. Seals attract great white sharks, which feed upon them and ferociously attack humans. We once had a thriving fishing industry, kept healthy in part by a bounty system of predator control. That ended in 1972 with the passage of the protection act, which not only lifted the bounties on fish-eating predators like seals, but placed...

The peak for shark activity along the waters off Massachusetts begins in August, but the Atlantic White Shark Conservancy began its summer research examining them Wednesday. In partnerships with the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries, the Atlantic White Shark Conservancy began its 2020 shark research by tagging three white sharks off of Monomoy. The sharks were circling a whale carcass when they were tagged.In previous years, researchers were only on the water about twice a week. Now, boats are out at least five times a week leading to more sightings.

Since he started tagging great whites 11 years ago, DMF shark researcher Gregory Skomal has gradually filled in gaps in buoy coverage and this summer will have 100 buoys, encircling the Cape and extending north to Cape Ann, most of them within a quarter-mile of the beach. Over 200 sharks already have been tagged. “The larger ones show up first and stay the longest,” Skomal said, as their body mass and ability to regulate their body temperature allows them to endure the cooler extremes of the seasons.The season typically starts at the end of May, with detections focused on Monomoy...

...Friday’s grand reopening turned into a harsh lesson for the small business, according to Lawrence, who told FOX25 Boston that customers frustrated with having to wait longer for their ice cream after the shop grew busy took their anger out on his staff. “One of my best workers quit yesterday at the end of her shift,” he said. “But the words she was called and the language, you wouldn’t even say in a men’s locker room. And to say it to a 17-year-old kid, they should be ashamed of themselves.”...

The field hospital constructed in the gymnasium at Joint Base Cape Cod in Bourne closed Tuesday without hosting a single patient with the coronavirus, according to the Cape Cod Times. Work to build the temporary hospital with 94 beds began at the beginning of April with anticipation of a surge along the Cape. Fortunately, it never arrived. “We never got into our surge numbers,” president and CEO of Cape Cod Healthcare Michael Lauf told the newspaper. The facility was open for about two weeks. The health care provider closed the hospital after discussions with Gov. Charlie Baker, the report said.

It looks like an act by a conservative trolling progressives, but a viral video of a college-age woman sobbing over the political demise of socialist presidential candidate Bernie Sanders no doubt reflects the emotional trauma of many in her generation. Actor James Woods retweeted the video on Tuesday with a comment: "Awwww. This is heartbreaking. Please, somebody tell her #Bernie needs another house in the south of France. Surely he’ll run in again in 2024. Until then she should buy a kitten." Wearing a "Cape Cod Massachusetts" sweatshirt, with a blanket and smartphone on her lap, the woman is being...

The sky was winter gray, but researchers took advantage Friday of a relatively rare day with calm seas and little wind to retrieve 18 acoustic shark detection buoys off the Outer Cape and another eight or nine in Cape Cod Bay. Although these buoys primarily record signals from sharks whose tags emit a unique identifying signal, they also record water temperature. Shark researchers Gregory Skomal of the state Division of Marine Fisheries and Megan Winton, a doctoral candidate at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth’s School of Marine Science and Technology, hope to use this temperature data to create a computer...

CHATHAM – The Atlantic White Shark Conservancy wrapped up their tagging season a few weeks ago, but researchers still have a lot of work ahead. The winter months bring with them plenty of work to be completed and data to be analyzed. “The winter is actually an incredibly important and productive time for us,” said Megan Winton, a staff scientist with the Atlantic White Shark Conservancy. “Right now we are processing all the videos that we collected over the summer, we are analyzing tagging data that the Division of Marine Fisheries has been collecting over the past almost decade,” she...

ORLEANS — On a sunny fall day, Kristian Sexton was sitting on Nauset Beach, hunched over a small hand-held monitor, his head buried in a sun shade. Offshore, feeding humpback whales were breaching, but closer to the beach, Sexton was tracking three great white sharks with a drone ….snip “It’s definitely a promising technology, not a perfect (shark detection) technology, nothing is, but in the right conditions you can see very well,” he said. Sexton is critical of the assessment of shark mitigation technologies by the Woods Hole Group ...snip In an email response to an interview request, Woods Hole...

CHATHAM (CBS) — After a summer full of shark sightings and beach closures, the Atlantic White Shark Conservancy is close to wrapping up shark tagging season. A record 46 sharks have been tagged so far, the most ever in one season. snip Scientists follow a specific process before tagging a shark. First, they make sure it’s not one they have tagged before. They use a omni-directional hydrophone that allows them to listen for the presence of a tag on an animal. The team also takes video of the shark to catalog and compare after. If the shark has no tag,...

NORTH EASTHAM — Thursday night marked the first time the public had an opportunity to weigh in on a recently released report on shark detection, deterrence, exclusion and other alternatives intended to keep people safe, or at least safer, when they enter the water at Outer Cape Beaches. “There’s a lot of techniques out there, and none of them are all that perfect, that’s what it comes down to,” said Todd Morrison, an oceanographic engineer for the Woods Hole Group, which produced the Outer Cape Shark Mitigation Alternative Analysis. The report was prepared under a $50,000 contract paid for by...