CHATHAM, Mass. — Quint, Chief Brody, Matt Hooper — those were some of the characters moviegoers got to know 50 years ago this summer when the blockbuster “Jaws” was released. And, oh yes, there was Bruce: the collective name given to the various mechanical maneaters who terrorized Amity Island.
Back in 1975, the premise of the movie notwithstanding, great white sharks were rarely seen off the Cape Cod coast. In decades prior, their numbers declined precipitously due to overfishing, accidental catchment and loss of their favorite food in the area, seals.
But in 1972, the Marine Mammal Protection Act became law — giving a boost to the seal population in New England. Twenty-five years later, Great White sharks gained federal protection, as well.
The end result: shark and seal numbers are rebounding. In one recent four-year period, researchers counted more than 800 white shark sightings off the Cape Cod coast — and there’s no reason to believe that number will do anything but go up.
Human encounters with sharks remain exceedingly rare — but they have an over-sized effect on the psyche of Cape communities and its image as a vacation spot. The last fatal shark attack happened off a beach in Wellfleet in 2018 when 26-year-old Arthur Medici of Revere was killed by a shark while riding a boogie board. At the time, it was the first shark-related fatality on the Cape in 82 years.
“We’re learning a lot about sharks and shark biology,” said Megan Winton, PhD, a scientist associated with the Atlantic White Shark Conservancy. “But at the end of the day our work is really all about people. When Arthur Medici was boogie-boarding and was killed by a white shark it just tore the community apart. And that’s always your worst day as a shark biologist.”
Tuesday, the Conservancy held its annual media day, to reveal what measures it’s taking to track shark movements off the Cape this summer and fall.
“We’ve got camera-tag systems, we’ve got drones,” said Greg Skomal, a marine biologist with the Massachusetts Department of Marine Fisheries and an avid shark researcher. “We’ve got newer technologies that give us a sense of what these animals are doing every second of their day.”
That invasion of shark privacy has a goal beyond learning more about the creatures. The Conservancy shares its data in real time so as to protect the public from potential encounters with sharks. It accomplishes this tracking with a series of data collection units positioned off the outer and inner Cape coasts.
“Those patterns will help us determine where the shark is most likely to be, what time of day and what areas,” Skomal said. “It is the 50th anniversary of Jaws and many of us have that film in our mind. But the bottom line is sharks are not here to eat people. If they were here to eat people, we’d have a lot more shark bites.”
Skomal said sharks identify preferred prey through smell — but that there are so many seals a nearby human’s scent can get lost in the mix. His first bit of advice is to steer clear of seals which are usually found in shallow areas off the coast.
“They’re not here to eat you, but they have made mistakes and can make mistakes,” he said.
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