May 28, 2019 — Seals have rebounded to healthy numbers along Massachusetts’ shores after being nearly decimated by early settlers and a bounty that later wiped out tens of thousands of them, according to experts — and that is what is attracting sharks.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration estimates there are at least 27,000 gray seals and 75,000 harbor seals in U.S. waters during their breeding seasons.
“What we’re witnessing is a comeback to a really healthy marine environment,” said Kimberly Murray, seal program lead at NOAA Fisheries in Woods Hole.
The numbers are a stark contrast to the 1700s, when gray seals had been nearly wiped out during the first 100 years of New England settlement, said Tony LaCasse, a spokesman for the New England Aquarium in Boston.
By the late 1800s, the seals had rebounded, but conflicts with commercial fisheries and a desire for the seals’ meat and pelts led to a bounty on both gray and harbor seals from 1888 to 1962 in Massachusetts and Maine. During those years, as many as 135,000 seals were killed, Murray said.
“Seals were perceived as competitors to fisherman,” LaCasse said. “Fishermen would carry shotguns in their boats and shoot them on sight.”