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More tags bring fuller picture of movements off shore The total number of great white sharks detected along the Cape has ballooned over the last few years as researchers continue to tag more of the apex predators each summer season. Going back to 2013, there were only 11 individual sharks detected by the Atlantic White Shark Conservancy off the Massachusetts coast, according to archived data from its new white shark logbook. Then jumping ahead seven years to 2020, the Atlantic White Shark Conservancy detected 118 individual sharks last year. The total number of recorded shark detections has also climbed at...

If any tagged great white sharks make it into Cape Cod waters in time for the Memorial Day weekend, scientists will be ready as the complete array of acoustic receivers has now been deployed. “It feels great to get these acoustic receivers out,” shark scientist Greg Skomal with Massachusetts Marine Fisheries said as he recently set the equipment into position with Megan Winton of the Atlantic White Shark Conservancy. “Shark season!” he added with a grin in the recently posted Atlantic White Shark Conservancy’s video. The Atlantic White Shark Conservancy’s Sharktivity app will soon start to light up with shark...

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...

Just when you think orcas couldn't possible be any more awesome, they get even better. A study in 2019 showed these whales are really good at scaring off the most feared beast in the sea. Yep. Orcas have toppled the great white shark off their 'apex predator' throne. A team of marine scientists found that great white sharks (Carcharodon carcharias) will make themselves extremely scarce whenever they detect the presence of orcas (Orcinus orca). "When confronted by orcas, white sharks will immediately vacate their preferred hunting ground and will not return for up to a year, even though the orcas...

CHATHAM, Mass. — It’s known as the unofficial end to summer, but on Labor Day weekend, peak shark season is just getting started. With the beautiful weather expected all day Monday, beach safety officials are warning that swimmers need to be vigilant, especially with a reduced number of lifeguards monitoring the public beaches. “It just keeps building and building, and now we have the most numbers that we have all summer long,” said Tony Pike, Beach Safety Director at Nauset Beach in Orleans. According to Pike, white sharks have been pinging sensors off the coast almost non-stop. “We’re starting to...

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...

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...

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...

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,...

CHATHAM – The 2019 shark tagging research season off Cape Cod is winding down, but plenty of great white sharks remain off the coast. ....snip “The goal today was to get out and tag a couple sharks and we were able to get four tagged,” he said. “It was a really productive day from our perspective. The more tags we’ve got out the more we are learning about these fish.” The four tags brought the season total up to 37, which is a record for the team....snip “Just because you may not see our boat on the water one day...

snip- “There’s been an absolute fascination with these creatures that has actually lured more people here than chased them away,” CEO of the Cape Cod Chamber of Commerce Wendy Northcross said. “People kind of have this huge curiosity. The most frequently asked questions here is, ‘Where can we go see the sharks?’” snip The Chamber of Commerce hired independent consultants to examine if people who frequently traveled to Cape Cod were affected by the appearance of sharks. The consultants didn’t bring up sharks, however, every person in the focus groups initiated a conversation on the animals. “They were asked point...

More great white sharks than ever are being spotted off the coast of Nova Scotia—including a 10-foot female who pinged in Halifax's harbour last month. Sharks aren't new visitors to these waters—about 20 different kinds of sharks have been regularly inhabiting the area for hundreds of years. But, just as grizzly bears aren't native to Nova Scotia's forests, great whites were never a run-of-the-mill sighting here.(snip) For the past few years, Warren Joyce, a fisheries technician with Fisheries and Oceans Canada, has been working with colleagues in Cape Cod, studying and tagging sharks in efforts to learn about their patterns...

In February, the Ocearch team was denied a state permit to catch and tag great white sharks in state waters. In his letter denying the application, David Pierce, director of the state Division of Marine Fisheries, cited concerns with the team fishing for great whites in an area near public beaches. Without that permit, Ocearch, which has a federal research permit to catch, tag and collect biological samples from white sharks, was anchored outside state waters, 4½ miles off Nantucket. At the same time the bait on seven lines of Ocearch buoys and hooks was going untouched, beaches along the...

Protection of gray seals and white sharks in recent years has led to a problem of shark attacks at Cape Cod. Soon, the Woods Hole Group will release a report on how to deal with the problem. I also have a report, with perhaps a different perspective and conclusions. A much-discussed solution is culling the seals. This is unrealistic. Many biologists believe that the Cape seals are intertwined with a larger population in Canada, and seals killed here would be replaced by seals swimming down from Canada. Even if possible, it would be a bloodbath, shown on national television, with...

“There was a day a couple of weeks ago where we had a pilot up in the air and a tour company who was out looking for sharks also had a pilot up in the air,” she said. “Our pilot was sending sightings in to us, and we were reporting them to the beaches and via the Sharktivity app and the other pilot was also doing that. So we had more eyes, we had more effort out there, we had two pilots out there, and because of that we were reporting a higher number of sightings."

Sightings of great whites off the shores of Cape Cod are a daily occurrence: Since June 1 the Atlantic White Shark Conservancy’s sharktivity app indicates there have been more than 160. “When we are lucky enough to actually get eyes on a shark, it really is no surprise,” said Nate Sears, natural resources manager for the town of Orleans, an area whose beaches have already been closed 12 times since mid-June due to confirmed shark sightings.