Posted on 06/28/2020 1:18:20 PM PDT by Capt. Tom
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 towns requesting radios to monitor pilot alerts.
...the reality is that surfers, paddleboarders and even swimmers will be using unguarded ocean areas to catch waves.
“The key to this is changing the behavior of people. They have to recognize that there’s a peak season when these animals are here. You shouldn’t be relying on someone actually locating the shark to decide how you are going to recreate in the water,” Sears said.
State Division of Marine Fisheries shark scientist Gregory Skomal tagged three great whites June 18, his first day on the water this year.
Town and park officials point to research by Skomal and the Atlantic White Shark Conservancy that showed that sharks were everywhere, from the tip of Monomoy around Provincetown to the mouth of the canal in Cape Cod Bay. Buoys that record the unique identifying signals from tags on over 200 great white sharks in 2019 showed that the bulk of the population, and the biggest sharks, still appear to reside along the Outer Cape’s Atlantic beaches. Researchers feel it’s likely there are many more sharks not being tracked.
(Excerpt) Read more at capecodtimes.com ...
Many people who recreate in the ocean in Mass. have either given up , or become more conservative in their behavior.
I see an uptick in paddle boards and Kayaks. Easy target for a white if it is interested.
This Federally protected seal/white shark problem is presently unsolvable.
Seals live for 35 years and white sharks for 60-70 years.
No shortage of either in Mass. waters. -Tom
Your tax dollars at work, when will people realize that their sky high taxes are due to this kind of elitism?
there is an essence of dead shark that can be put into the waters and sharks will scatter for a long time- I mean scatter- way down to equator type of scattering- for some reason the sharks are terrified of dead shark scent
But there were also 31 great whites off Herring Cove Beach in Provincetown last year and the Rock Harbor buoy in Orleans adjacent to popular Skaket Beach recorded over 1,300 hits from 17 white sharks. And those are only the sharks that have been tagged.
Some people think my fear of open water is ridiculous, but I KNOW there are things down there that think I’m delicious, crunchy and would taste good with or without ketchup! ;)
Kinda silly to put yourself in a predator’s natural habitat, but that’s just me. :)
As you well know, we have a protected species as a food source. A very abundant food source. It’s time to introduce the public to seal meat.
45 year old native codder here. Nice to meet you.
How come there is no Great Black Shark?
I think that’s raciss.
The key to this is changing the behavior of people. They have to recognize that there’s a peak season when these animals are here.
—
The peak season being when the juicy tourists are in the water.
Odds are you get on your motorcycle and fly down the road no problem. Odds are you get on your surf board to surf no problem. Then a little old lady makes a left hand turn in front of you on your bike or a 12 footer thinks your a funny looking seal. “Farewell and Adieu all my fair Spanish ladies .
Wait till some homo from P’town gets chomped on by a Great White. Not only will it be racist, but also homophobic.
From my shark website:
Sharks have several eye configurations; such as a contrasting Iris, with vertical slit pupils, horizontal slit pupils, or more rounded pupils, similar to our eyes. The eyes are also of different colors. Some shark species have black eyes, but many other sharks do not. When I say black, that is what it will look like to you and me at a distance. Inside of the outer coating on some shark's eyes there may be a diferent color in there, that can only be seen from a very short distance. Sandtigers have yellow eyes with a round black pupil.
I think if every swimmer wears a mask that the shark attacks would be eliminated.....
We share the same caution.
A man once laughed at me and told me we humans only use less than 1% of the oceans and then only the top part.
I told him he was right and it was what was in the other 99+% that scared the begeezus out of me.
That was in 1969 and I haven’t changed my thinking on the matter.
Ok I’m making a Hugh jump here. You mean a N-95 mask, right? LMFeffingAO.
And seal skin coats, gloves and hats. -Tom
S-95 for sharks.
C-95 for badly made chinese virus masks.
N-95 that will work temporarily but do nothing for all the other locations the virus lands on your body.
I know Life’s a Cr@p Shoot - but I’m not taking any chances! ;)
There is just so much we can learn from Sharks.
They never run out of ICU beds.
MA has a 14 day self-quarantine requirement for tourists.
Sharks are the least of the Cape’s problems.
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