November 9, 2018 — Wellfleet, Mass. – Cape Cod National Seashore Superintendent Brian Carlstrom invites the public to attend an information session on sharks, seals, and public safety on Wednesday, Nov. 14.
The meeting will take place at the Nauset Regional Middle School auditorium in Orleans, from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. The event will consist of speaker presentations followed by an expert-panel question and answer session.
October 12, 2018 — The Atlantic White Shark Conservancy is teaming with a Massachusetts coastal town to provide first aid training for shark attacks.
The “Stop the Bleed” program will begin Oct. 18 and taught for free by Orleans Fire Rescue officials. New England Cable News reports the program is meant to help people in life-threatening emergencies by teaching them the basic techniques of bleeding control.
On Sept. 15, 26-year-old Arthur Medici died after being attacked by a shark at Newcomb Hollow Beach in Wellfleet. He was the state’s first fatality from a shark attack in more than 80 years.
Read the full story from the Associated Press at the Gloucester Daily Times
November 16, 2016 — ORLEANS, Mass. — They were visible from shore for most of Tuesday, seven vessels of between 140 to 170 feet in length, four miles off Nauset Beach.
Some worked in tandem, towing a huge net between them, scooping up mackerel or herring right on the Cape’s doorstep and making local fishermen like Bruce Peters angry.
“They suck up all the herring and mackerel, the forage fish we need for the cod, tuna, stripers, the whales, what we need for the food chain,” said Peters, a longtime commercial cod and groundfish fisherman, who now runs a charter boat business and fishes commercially for tuna. “We need a 50-mile buffer zone to keep these guys offshore.”
Buffer zones that prohibit the herring fleet from fishing within anywhere from 6 to 50 miles from shore are part of a new amendment to the herring fishery management plan that will be outlined at the New England Fishery Management Council meeting Thursday in Newport, Rhode Island, and voted on at the January meeting in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. The council — a representative body of fishermen, industry representatives, environmental organizations and state and federal fishery officials — draws up plans to sustainably manage fish and shellfish stocks in federal waters. They received 238 pages of comment, much of it in support of requiring the herring fleet to fish farther from shore.