SHARK! 2011 edition

The water is warming up and along with bait tourists, the Sharks will be arriving.
First up we have:
Fisherman seeking bait finds great white
By Doug Fraser
dfraser@capecodonline.com
May 07, 2011

The great white sharks have returned to area waters early this year, with an 18- to 20-foot shark spotted off Aquinnah on Friday morning.

Menemsha fisherman Jeff Lynch was trying to catch some mackerel for bait when he saw a whale carcass floating close to shore. Lynch maneuvered his 23-foot center console boat closer to take a picture when suddenly a shark materialized from underneath the whale.

"It was like, whoa! It surprised me," said Lynch, 28, who lives in Chilmark. The telltale flash of white belly and the triangular fin cutting the surface indicated Lynch was in the presence of one of the world's great predators. The shark swam around the whale then around Lynch's boat.

The dead minke whale was later measured at 17 feet long, and Lynch thought the shark was longer as it swam by, and close to the size of his boat.

"Everything on the fish was just gigantic: its tail, body, fins. It was one of the biggest things I've ever seen. It had to be over 2,000 pounds," the Menemsha fisherman said.

Lynch called state Division of Marine Fisheries shark expert Greg Skomal right away and sent him photos of the ferocious fish from his cellphone. Skomal confirmed the sighting as a great white, and put the animal's size at more than 18 feet. The largest great white ever measured was 21 feet long.

With water temperatures around 50 degrees, Skomal thought it was still too cold in Cape waters to see great whites, which prefer water temperatures around 60 degrees.
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Gonna need a bigger boat!

From the Martha's Vineyard Times:
Martha's Vineyard fishermen spot great white feeding on whale off Gay Head

Three Martha's Vineyard fishermen spotted a large great white shark circling a dead whale tangled in lobster gear early Friday morning. The sighting took place about a mile off Gay Head, the westernmost end of the Island .
A great white shark spotted off Gay Head Friday morning was circling a dead minke whale.

Environmental Police and federal officials from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute responded to the report. They towed he carcass of a small minke whale to Woods Hole and to a laboratory where biologists will examine the body.

Fishermen Jeff Lynch of Chilmark and Will Farrissey and Mike Capen of Oak Bluffs left Menemsha Harbor about 6 am in Mr. Lynch's 23-foot Sea Ox center console boat to fish for mackerel.

Mr. Lynch said he spotted the whale carcass floating in lobster gear. He reported the sighting to the Coast Guard and decided to take a closer look. "The next thing I saw, there was like a 20-foot great white," Mr. Lynch told The Times in a telephone conversation Friday morning.

Mr. Lynch, a 28-year-old commercial fisherman, took photos of the shark and emailed them to Greg Skomal, Division of Marine Fisheries shark specialist. Mr. Skomal positively identified the shark as a great white from the photographs.

Friday morning the fishermen put off their pursuit of mackerel to watch the shark. "We sat there and watched it for about a half an hour," Mr. Lynch said. "It never took a bite. It didn't seem very interested in the whale. But he was nudging it and going around it. He came right up to my boat, about two feet from it."

Great whites return to Cape in force
By Doug Fraser
dfraser@capecodonline.com
July 08, 2011

The first great white of the season was spotted a tad early in May by Menemsha fisherman Jeff Lynch, who saw the 18- to 20-foot shark swimming around a whale carcass off Aquinnah.

But over the past week, the great whites have returned to Cape waters in force. There have been three confirmed sightings from Chatham to Truro, and an unsubstantiated sighting off Nantucket that expert Greg Skomal of the state Division of Marine Fisheries thinks will likely prove true.

There was never any doubt the great whites would be back. Seals, their preferred food, are now abundant on the Cape and Islands.
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Here is the "Unsubstantiated Story":

Great White spotted off Great Point

By Tobey Leske

I&M Contributing Writer

(July 7, 2011) Capt. Mark Genther, Just Do It Too, got quite a surprise the other evening while on a trip off Great Point. As he was making his way a long the bar about an eighth of a mile off shore and in very shallow water, he came upon a 16- to 18-foot great white just sort of lolling about in the shallows, and we’re talking shallows here, folks. The water the shark was in was so shallow that Mark could only get within 20 to 30 feet of it before his props started churning up sand. So much for the theory that great whites stay only in deep water.


He was to able to get close enough, however, to give his guests a rare, and hair-raising, opportunity to see one of the great denizens of the deep. The shark itself seemed quite unconcerned about the nearby boat (I’m not sure much of anything concerns an 18-foot great white) and just sort of hung there, chilling out, perhaps waiting for a passing seal to munch on.
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6 people (maybe) on a charter boat sounds substantiated to me.

Great white spotted off Monomoy Island

By ROBERT GOLD
July 15, 2011

MONOMOY — Chatham Harbormaster Stuart Smith was deploying shark research equipment Wednesday afternoon around Monomoy Island when a 10-foot great white shark surfaced next to his vessel.

State Division of Marine Fisheries biologist John Chisholm was onboard and identified the shark as a great white. The duo were installing receivers intended to detect great whites. Several of the predators have been tagged and the receivers pick up signals emitted by the tags.

The 10-foot shark was seen near the southern tip of Monomoy Island.

The shark population in local waters has increased over the past few years, and great whites have been observed in several locations off the Cape and Islands, particularly along the coast of Chatham, where a growing seal population makes for perfect feeding grounds.

Last year, several public beaches were closed when sharks were spotted nearby.

Smith said no beaches have been closed in Chatham because of sharks this year.

Hmmmmmmmmmm........... no beach closures YET

Chatham issues shark advisory for swimmers

August 09, 2011

CHATHAM – For the second year in a row, great white sharks are forcing Chatham officials to warn swimmers to stay out of the offshore waters of east-facing ocean beaches.

The town issued the advisory Tuesday because of an increase in the number of great white sightings in the area of the Chatham Inlet along North Beach and South Beach, interim Town Manager Mark Pawlina told selectmen Tuesday night.

The advisory also warns against swimming within 300 feet – the length of a football field – of seals, a favorite meal for the great white sharks that prowl along the barrier beaches on the Atlantic during the summer.

The town's beaches in Chatham Harbor and along Nantucket Sound remain open, he said, but the advisory warns swimmers to pay close attention to their surroundings and not venture too far offshore.

Last year the town issued a similar warning July 17 and, after a shark was spotted Aug. 12 inside Chatham Harbor, closed the harbor and popular Lighthouse Beach, just inside the inlet, to swimming for about two days.

SUSAN MILTON

Sharks trigger warnings from Chatham officials

By Susan Milton
August 10, 2011

CHATHAM — For the second year in a row, great white sharks are forcing Chatham officials to warn swimmers to stay close to shore at east-facing ocean beaches.

The town issued the advisory Tuesday because of an increase in the number of great white sightings in the area of the Chatham Inlet along North Beach and South Beach, interim Town Manager Mark Pawlina told selectmen Tuesday night.

The advisory also warns against swimming within 300 feet of seals, a favorite meal for the great whites that prowl the barrier beaches on the Atlantic during the summer.

The town's beaches in Chatham Harbor and along Nantucket Sound remain open, he said, but the advisory warns swimmers to pay close attention to their surroundings and not venture too far offshore.

Last year the town issued a similar warning July 17. After a shark was spotted Aug. 12 inside Chatham Harbor, the harbor and popular Lighthouse Beach, just inside the inlet, were closed to swimming for about two days.

Shark sighting leads to nighttime swimming ban

By Susan Milton
smilton@capecodonline.com
August 11, 2011

CHATHAM — The sighting of a large great white shark near the popular and crowded Lighthouse Beach has led to a ban on nighttime swimming at several Chatham beaches, Harbormaster Stuart Smith said Wednesday afternoon.

The swimming ban will be from 5 p.m. to 9:30 a.m. on all east-facing ocean beaches in town, including Lighthouse Beach.

The decision seemed "like the prudent thing to do," after a shark was spotted inside Chatham Harbor.

Officials found seal carcasses believed to be attacked by sharks at South Beach, just beyond the point of Lighthouse Beach, Smith said. The carcasses were found about three-quarters of a mile to a mile from the beach parking lot, Smith said.

During the height of the day, "we think the sharks are further out (offshore)," he said, explaining the nighttime ban. Also, during the daytime, the town has more people on patrol watching for sharks.

The increasing number of sharks in local waters led to similar precautions last year along several Cape Cod and south coast beaches, but this week's ban is the first time in 2011 that beaches have been closed because of shark sightings.

Wednesday's action expands Tuesday's ban on swimming within 300 feet of seals, a favorite prey of the great white. Tuesday's ban applied indefinitely to swimming along the entire barrier beach shoreline, from the Chatham line to South Beach where it connects to Monomoy Island.

The town didn't close the beaches to swimming completely, but the announcement suggests that beachgoers, mariners and swimmers pay close attention to their surroundings when in the water and not venture too far from shore.

A yoga bait group that meets every morning on Lighthouse Beach reported seeing the large fin of a great white shark on Wednesday, Smith said. His office didn't get the information until later in the afternoon.

In recent weeks, there have been many credible, confirmed sightings of great white sharks near Monomoy Island and the North Beach inlets, Smith previously said, as well as credible reports of seal carcasses, attacked by sharks, along North Beach Island and Monomoy's eastern shores.

The town issued a similar warning on July 17 last year. After a shark was spotted Aug. 12 inside Chatham Harbor, the harbor and Lighthouse Beach, just inside the inlet, were closed completely to swimming for about two days.

Although there has been growing concern about sharks in recent years, there has not been a shark attack in local waters since 1936, when a man was killed swimming in Buzzards Bay near Mattapoisett.

Great white taggers chase sharks off Chatham coast
By Patrick Cassidy
pcassidy@capecodonline.com
August 13, 2011

CHATHAM — The day aboard the Ezyduzit looking for great white sharks began with promise in the air early Friday.

With the crackle of a radio in the 32-foot tuna boat's tower off the coast of Chatham, the chase was on.

"That means they saw something," said Massachusetts shark researcher Greg Skomal.

Capt. Bill Chaprales, owner of Cape Cod Shark Hunters, gunned the Ezyduzit toward the location where spotter pilot George Breen had reported a 15-foot great white rushing seals in shallow water off Monomoy Island.

Chaprales' son Niko, Skomal, Skomal's assistant John Chisholm and a contingent of media types were onboard for Friday's excursion to tag great whites with acoustic transmitters.

The sun was bright, the sea relatively calm and the prospects good for seeing the large sharks that have recently taken to dining on a booming population of seals off Chatham.

Once they were in the area where the shark had been spotted — an area on the east side of Monomy they dubbed "Great White Cove" — the search began again.

On the last trip out, the crew had tagged a 16-footer nearby, Niko Chaprales said. When another, similar-sized shark showed up a short while later the same day, they thought it was the same one.

It wasn't. The researchers don't think they have ever seen a tagged shark a second time — an indication that more than just a few are moving in from deep waters to feed on the burgeoning blubber buffet.

Chatham sharks close more beaches
By Patrick Cassidy
pcassidy@capecodonline.com
August 17, 2011

CHATHAM — Swimming at ocean-facing beaches in Chatham has been banned indefinitely because of increased great white shark activity in the area.

The announcement Monday was prompted by an increasing number of attacks reported on seals, including one witnessed Sunday afternoon in shallow water just north of the new inlet to Pleasant Bay, Chatham officials said.

"It was observed by people on the beach," Chatham Director of Parks and Recreation Dan Tobin said.

The beaches affected by the swimming ban include North Beach in Chatham, North Beach Island and South Beach, areas which are difficult to reach without a boat or by four-wheel-drive vehicle.

Orleans beaches remain open, Orleans Parks and Beaches Superintendent Paul Fulcher said.

"We have not had any sightings off our section of the beach to date," he said.

Although there may be great white sharks off Orleans' beaches, there are fewer seals congregating there than in Chatham, Fulcher said.

Lighthouse Beach in Chatham remains open to swimming during the day but a prohibition against night swimming is still in effect. A shark observed last week near the popular beach led officials to prohibit swimming from 5 p.m. to 9:30 a.m. and swimming within 300 feet of seals.

Louis deBenedictis, 54, of Milton was unconcerned with the swimming bans Tuesday morning as he swam at Lighthouse Beach.

"We feel perfectly safe," he said of his family, which is in the midst of a two-week vacation in Chatham.

Although the shore and the overlooking parking lot was crowded with people and cars, deBenedictis was the only one seen over about a half-hour who had ventured more than calf-deep into the water.

Mike Smith, 38, of Hopkinton, said his family comes to Lighthouse Beach often but they prefer swimming further north at Nauset Beach, Nauset Light Beach and, because of their young children, at Cape Cod Bay beaches.

"We're pretty cautious about it," Smith said as he steered his nearly 2-year-old son Nolan away from the water.

At the entrance for oversand vehicles traveling south toward North Beach from the Nauset Beach parking lot in Orleans, Steve and Lou Bengston of Brewster said their children regularly surf in the area.

"It doesn't bother us in the least," Lou Bengston said of the sharks. "That's where they live. If they were out back in my pool, I'd be nervous."

Centerville resident Ken Collings agreed as he prepared his vehicle so he and his son, Keith, could go surfing.

"We're No. 2 on their food chain," Ken Collings, 56, said. "I'm happy to see the seals. They're No. 1."

The sharks are the "landlord," he said.

Respect is the rent, Keith Collings, 24, said.

"If a great white bites somebody out here it's by accident," his father said.

Attacks on seals, however, appear to be increasing, Tobin and Chatham Harbormaster Stuart Smith said.

In the past few weeks there have been eight to 10 attacks on seals reported, Smith said.

The apparent increase in attacks could be caused by several factors, Massachusetts shark researcher Greg Skomal said Tuesday.

"That could be a function of more people paying attention," he said. "It could be more sharks. It could be the sharks that are here are getting better at it."

Unlike other locations where great white sharks typically attack their prey from below and behind, it appears from the seal attacks witnessed locally that the sharks are coming from the side in relatively shallow water, Skomal said.

The seals around Cape Cod, which have recovered in recent years almost to the historic population levels that once existed here, are drawing the sharks in, Skomal said.

Before the Cape's seal population spiked, great white sharks in the northwestern Atlantic Ocean may have survived on whale carcasses or a robust seal colony on Sable Island southeast of Nova Scotia, Skomal said. While younger sharks may feed on fish, dolphins or smaller sharks, as they get older and bigger the sharks go through a dietary shift toward larger prey like seals, he said.

"Their proficiency at feeding will get better over time," he said of the sharks. "It's learned behavior."

Skomal, who has spent the past several years working with Capt. Bill Chaprales to attach satellite and acoustic tags to the sharks to track their movements, said he is surprised by the number of sharks that have quickly returned to the area.

"I think it's remarkable that the white sharks have picked up on this scent trail and have moved in in relatively large numbers," he said.

1.) http://sharkattackphotos.com/

2.) http://search.yahoo.com/search;_ylt=Av.UvKNF3bqQcLg3_T0SZGybvZx4?fr=yfp-t-892-s&toggle=1&cop=mss&ei=UTF8&p=how%20to%20avoid%20shark%20attack





1.) Warning! Don`t open if you have a weak stomach or have just eaten, are prone to nightmares, or trying to quit smoking.

2.) Open to prevent #1.)

Sharks unseen but still lurking off Cape Cod

By Susan Milton
smilton@capecodonline.com
October 08, 2011

CHATHAM — Nobody's seen or heard of any great white sharks in weeks, but experts think the massive predators are still here in the waters off Chatham.

"We've had sharks stay as late as December. It's entirely plausible that they are there but we don't have eyes on them," Massachusetts shark researcher Gregory Skomal said Thursday.

Chatham Harbormaster Stuart Smith said Friday the only possible shark-related activity was the recent report of two seals on South Beach that looked as if they had been attacked. South Beach is the barrier beach now connected to the mainland that stretches south of Lighthouse Beach.

The fact that the large predators may still be around and attacking seals — a favorite, fatty prey plentiful near Chatham — has become such a "commonplace occurrence that it's causing less of a furor," he said.

Ocean-facing beaches in Chatham are still off-limits to swimming, a ban that includes North Beach, North Beach Island and South Beach. All are part of the offshore barrier beach, usually reached by boat or oversand vehicles.

Also, Chatham's popular Lighthouse Beach, located just inside the barrier beach, is still closed to swimming from 5:30 p.m. to 9:30 a.m.

"I don't think we're inconveniencing people at all this time of year.

There are still plenty of places in Chatham to swim," Chatham Recreation Director Daniel Tobin said.

"I see more people around our Nantucket Sound beaches — which never closed and never were concerned with sharks — and the water there is warmer."

This is the second year in a row that Chatham has closed ocean-facing beaches during the August tourist season because of sightings of great white sharks near seals and bathing beaches.

The sharks come north each year as Atlantic waters warm up and patrol the shoreline near the growing colonies of seals from Chatham to Truro. The sharks head south to Florida as ocean waters cool.

There are still plenty of seals around, said Tobin, who has seen them in the inner harbor, right across from Lighthouse Beach.

But this time of year, there are fewer fishermen out on the water and fewer people walking the beaches who might see and report sharks, Smith said.

Bad weather this fall also has suspended shark-watching, Skomal said. Hurricane Irene in late August and subsequent storms grounded the state's spotting flights. Storms and winds also made it too rough to take laptop computers out to download data from the 10 acoustic receivers located between Truro and Monomoy Island.

The receivers collect signals from passing sharks that were tagged with transmitters. The data lets Skomal track the movements of the tagged sharks locally.

Skomal has been encouraged by forecasts for calm weather.

"We'll know if the sharks were here — and we just couldn't see them — when we download data from the receivers," he said.
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Kind of anti-climactic, but a shark story none the less.

For sharks, it all adds up in Cape waters

By Patrick Cassidy
pcassidy@capecodonline.com
November 12, 2011

Experts have made the first scientific attempt to quantify the shark phenomena in local waters, and what they have concluded is (spoiler alert): More seals means more sharks.

"That's it in a nutshell," said state shark researcher Greg Skomal, who gave the Cape Cod Times a preview of a draft paper on the relationship between a burgeoning gray seal population around Monomoy Island and increasing visits from the great white sharks that feed on them.

Although the basic findings may seem obvious given reports in recent years of shark sightings around Chatham, the 12-page paper lays the groundwork for important future research, Skomal said.
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I've read better.

More seals = more sharks.

the article could have been those 4 words.

We sure do love our sharks!!
A million Sydneys!