Great White sharks Archives - Page 5 of 6

Great whites help scientists understand ocean’s ‘twilight zone’

July 6, 2018 — Four years ago, Lydia, a 14 ½-foot, 1-ton great white shark almost made history when she swam over the Mid-Atlantic Ridge in March of 2014, a submerged mountain chain that runs from the Arctic Ocean to the southern tip of Africa, and entered the eastern Atlantic.

No other great white had made a documented Atlantic crossing and, while she ultimately turned back 800 miles short of the Cornish coastline, scientists puzzled over why she made the trip at all.

Great whites are driven by the search for food, but a foray into the open ocean beyond the continental shelf, often portrayed as a desert relieved only by an occasional oasis, was baffling. Finding a possible answer took detective work, piecing together data from some of the most sophisticated technology strapped to two great whites, as well as a network of satellites and ocean-going robots. It’s a technique scientists hope will be a model for future research into the unknown worlds of the deep sea and for conservation efforts to protect that ecosystem.

Read the full story at the Cape Cod Times

Great white shark surprises New Jersey fishermen: ‘This is crazy’

July 5, 2018 — After about 7 hours of fishing for tuna 40 miles off the coast of New Jersey on Sunday, fisherman Chris O’Neill and three other crew members decided to come closer to shore and search for mako sharks, a popular game fish in the area.

The group — which included Chris’ uncle Joe, Sam Messler and Robert McLaughlin — put out three fishing lines at 20, 40 and 65 feet deep. After about 45 minutes, O’Neill noticed the 40-foot reel start to turn. The crew waited quietly for about two minutes before the reel started to scream.

“We started reeling it in. At first, we didn’t know what we had, though we were hoping it was mako,” O’Neill, of Little Egg Harbor, told Fox News.

Within 15 minutes, a fin surfaced and the fishermen pulled the creature to the side of the boat. As O’Neill turned the 4- to 6-foot fish over, he saw its jaw and knew “right away” it wasn’t a mako: it was a great white.

“As soon as its head flashed out of water we knew what it was,” O’Neill said. “We’re fishermen. We do this a lot. You get to know the species.”

The great white shark’s triangular-shaped teeth, large gills and broad jawline are dead giveaways, O’Neill described.

Read the full story at Fox News

Fishermen encounter great white shark off New Jersey coast

July 3, 2018 — A party of four fishermen looking for one brand of ocean predator encountered another — a great white shark — while fishing over a once-lost shipwreck 10 to 15 miles from the shoreline.

According to a crew member, the shark was hooked by accident Sunday with fishing gear and let go immediately.

Chris O’Neill of Little Egg Harbor said as soon as they identified the shark they cut the line and released it. O’Neill took a photo of the shark when it was near their 26-foot-long boat.

“There are a lot of rules and regulations when it comes to these sharks. As soon as we knew what we had we turned him loose,” said O’Neill.

Great white sharks are prohibited to be landed by fishermen and must be released if hooked.

O’Neill said they were not trying to catch a great white. His party was fishing for another species of shark called a mako, a popular game fish. In the video at the top, you can see all the giants of the sea that venture into the Jersey Shore’s waters.

Read the full story at the Asbury Park Press

MASSACHUSETTS: First three sharks of the season detected off the coast of Cape Cod

June 18, 2018 — Shark season in New England officially kicked off this week, and marine biologists have already detected the first three great whites of the year off the coast of Cape Cod.

The sharks first showed up on marine biologists’ scanners June 7 and have been detected off the outer Cape intermittently since Tuesday, said Greg Skomal, a shark expert at the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries.

The research team began checking receivers on the Cape on Thursday and were able to pick up signals from Monomoy Island to Wellfleet, Skomal said.

“I don’t think the sharks have left. I’m sure they’re still around,” he said. “And more and more will start trickling in as time goes on over the course of the month.”

The researchers detected the great whites in multiple areas over several days — including the first, whom biologists call Omar, off the coast of Orleans on June 7, followed by another shark, Turbo, near Wellfleet two days later, said Marianne Long, the education director at the Atlantic White Shark Conservancy, which is assisting the Division of Marine Fisheries in the research.

Sandy, the third great white, was also detected swimming near Orleans on Monday, and Omar was detected again in Chatham on Tuesday, Long said.

Many sharks in the area have acoustic tags on them, she said, so although none of these sharks were actually spotted, the receivers picked up their acoustic signals.

The region has been “very active” with sharks in the past several years, Skomal said.

“These are great whites, and they feed on seals during the summertime,” he said. “We have a sizable seal population on the Cape, so that’s where they usually go.”

The shark season usually begins in June and can last until November, Long said. Most Cape Cod residents and vacationers are generally aware of the marine animals, she said, but she advised the public to be cautious and avoid swimming beyond waist-deep waters, especially off the coast.

“It’s important that when people go to the beach, they read all the signage to make them aware of all the recent sightings,” she said. “We do have these large animals off the coast in the water.”

Scientists: Maine coast could see more great white sharks

December 5, 2017 — PORTLAND, Maine — A great white shark detected in waters off Maine could be a sign that the big fish will become a more common sight in the years to come, say scientists who study sharks in New England.

White sharks are near the northern edge of their range along the Maine coast, though they are not commonly seen in the area. One of the sharks was spotted in the waters off Kennebunkport in the summer of 2016, sparking interest in finding out how many live off Maine.

University of New England marine scientist James Sulikowski has set out to answer that question, and he’s making his first findings public. Tracking devices discovered a different, 12-foot great white about 1.5 miles off of Old Orchard Beach in September of this year, he said.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at the Boston Herald

Study tracks great white sharks off Maine coast

A UNE professor joins Massachusetts researchers in examining patterns of a population likely to proliferate in the Gulf of Maine.

July 31, 2017 — Marine biologists are embarking on the first study dedicated to learning about the habits of great white sharks off the coast of southern Maine, where the scientists say the fishes’ population is likely to increase.

University of New England professor James Sulikowski will collaborate with Greg Skomal of the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries to see how often the sharks come near the coast.

Great white sharks are the world’s largest predatory fish. Known for their powerful jaws and serrated teeth, they can grow to more than 20 feet and 4,000 pounds.

They have been protected from harvesting in U.S. waters since 1991. Skomal said the shark population has been rebounding since.

“We definitely believe the entire East Coast population is increasing and that we are likely to see white sharks in the Gulf of Maine increasing,” he said.

Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald

A growing concern over great white sharks in Cape Cod

June 29, 2017 — An influx of great white shark sightings has residents and tourists worried about potential encounters in the water, especially during the heart of summer.

Senior Fisheries Biologist Dr. Greg Skomal told ABC News the increase in the great white shark population off the Massachusetts coastline is correlated to the gray seal population and that numbers are expected to rise even further.

“We’ve been studying sharks off the coast of Massachusetts for 30 years and our work with white sharks off Cape Cod is relatively recent,” Dr. Skomal said on “Good Morning America.” “The numbers we’re seeing on a relative scale are increasing, in 2014 we counted 80 individuals over the course of the summer and just last summer that went up to about 147. So there is a general increasing trend as more and more sharks recruit to the area.”

This season at least six great white shark sightings have already been reported, including a recent sighting off Wellfleet on May 9.

The National Park Service for Cape Cod has issued alerts to heed advisories at beaches to help ensure safety “particularly regarding white sharks.”

Skomal believes the influx of sharks is a direct result of the growing seal population. “We think it’s highly correlated with the growing presence of gray seals in the area. Big white sharks like to feed on gray seals. Over the course of the last 45 years, the gray seal population is a conservation success story. It has rebounded after protection was put in place in 1972 and that rebounding population now has reached levels that could be an excess of 20 to 30,000 animals in the area and white sharks are drawn to those areas to feed on them.”

Read the full story at WJBF

MASSACHUSETTS: Omar the shark back in Chatham

June 27, 2017 — An 11-foot great white shark known to researchers as Omar has returned to Cape Cod just in time for the summer season, according to local shark watchers.

Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries scientist Gregory Skomal and his team of researchers tracked the tagged shark from their boat off the coast of Chatham early yesterday morning.

“It’s exciting,” Skomal said. “It’s like seeing somewhat of an old friend.”

As the Herald reported yesterday, 147 great white sharks were confirmed in Cape Cod waters last summer, and Skomal predicts at least that many will return this season. The sharks are largely drawn to the abundant grey seal population that lives off the Cape’s eastern seaboard.

Omar has a history in Cape waters. According to the Atlantic White Shark Conservancy, biologist John Chisholm first identified the great white in 2015. Skomal tagged the animal when he returned last summer, allowing his team to detect when Omar swims near one of their research receivers.

Read the full story at the Boston Herald

Cape Cod Warned of Shark Boom

June 26, 2017 — A great white shark population boom is underway off Cape Cod, with as many as 150 expected in local waters this summer — and first responders are training to keep an eye out for the massive predators and deal with their traumatic bites.

“They have multiplied in numbers exponentially since I became chief,” said Orleans fire Chief Anthony Pike, who has led Orleans Fire and Rescue for the past three years. “Great white sharks comprise about 30 percent of my daily work right now, and I never, ever thought that would be a thing.”

Massachusetts Marine Fisheries scientist Gregory Skomal and others began studying the regional population of white sharks in 2014, when they counted 68 great whites. Last summer, that number was 147.

Skomal says 40 percent of the 141 sharks his research team tracked in 2015 returned to Cape waters in 2016. According to the Atlantic Shark Conservancy, there have already been eight confirmed great white sightings this month. Great whites typically patrol to the cool ocean waters off Chatham and other Cape towns between July and October, and Skomal — who has been with Marine Fisheries for 30 years — said the number of shark sightings has jumped over the past decade.

“For my first 20 years we never talked about sharks,” Skomal said.

Great whites travel to the Cape to prey on the area’s large population of gray seals. The last fatal shark attack in Massachusetts was in 1937, and if one of the animals does bite a human, Skomal said it’s most likely a case of “mistaken identity.”

“You know, biting the person thinking that it might be a normal prey item like a seal. Typically, the shark won’t eat the person,” Skomal said. “As a result, though, white sharks have very big jaws and sharp teeth, and cause traumatic injuries, and those kinds of traumatic injuries could lead to fatality.”

Read the full story at the Boston Herald

Sharks should be happy about new Google Earth survey of seal populations

June 14, 2017 — Gray seals are booming. They’ve flocked to coastal Massachusetts, where hunters once killed the animals wholesale — a dead seal’s nose could fetch a $5 reward in the 1960s.

Twenty years ago, there were about 2,000 seals near Cape Cod and Nantucket. A new estimate, published Wednesday in the journal Bioscience, suggests there are now as many as 50,000.

‘‘We should be celebrating the recovery of gray seals as a conservation success,’’ said David Johnston, an author of the study and marine biologist at Duke University .

Where seals go, sharks often follow. Great white sightings in Cape Cod increased from 80 in 2014 to 147 in 2016. Johnston said the shark spike may be linked to the seals. ‘‘One of our tagged animals was killed by a white shark,’’ he said.

Maine and Massachusetts once placed bounties on seals because fishermen feared they would gobble up valuable fish such as cod. (There is little evidence that seals actually compete with fishermen, Johnston said.) The century-long bounty hunt claimed up to 135,000 animals.

The seals bounced back after 1972’s Marine Mammal Protection Act outlawed the killings. ‘‘I’m a firm believer if you just stop doing bad things to wildlife they will recover,’’ Johnston said. The seals’ recovery raised a question infrequently asked in conservation: What happens after success?

‘‘We haven’t done a great job of preparing people,’’ he said, ‘‘that they would be back again.’’

Part of that means quantifying the success. In 2011, a National Marine Fisheries Service aerial survey estimated 15,000 seals swam in southeastern Massachusetts waters.

Read the full story at the Boston Globe