Great white sharks have become a new part of the daily beach life at Cape Cod. Some are now feeding off the resurgent gray seals in the area.
ORLEANS, Mass. — It's 11:30 a.m. on a sticky August morning at Nauset Beach here in this Cape Cod town, when another call comes in on the walkie-talkie of Sarah Newcomb- Baker, the beach's head lifeguard.
Shark-sightings have been a regular occurrence this summer on the sandy beaches that dot Cape Cod, a popular vacation hub of New England. Brochures distributed on beaches urge visitors to"Be shark smart." Signs warn,"Know your risk when entering the water." Following the back-to-back sightings this day, Nauset Beach has purple shark flags erected throughout. It means that sharks are in the area.
The sharks swim up from the south Atlantic Ocean and elsewhere each year in May and June with more appearing each month. They will largely leave when the waters cool in the fall. "That has definitely strengthened us as a unit, us as a town, along with the seashore," Newcomb- Baker said. Although an exact number is unclear, one recent estimate using Google Earth imagery had the gray seal population between 30,000 and 50,000.
Now, their work has a new focus – studying sharks' behavior as they prey on seals. Skomal and his researchers are using acoustic and satellite technology, while individually placing tags called"acceleration data loggers" on the sharks from boats. It's made available new behavior data about their eating habits."We firmly believe that bites on people are mistakes. That's a shark thinking they are biting a seal," Skomal said.
A new group, started by residents of Nantucket island, dubbed the Coalition to Amend the Marine Mammal Protection Act, is pushing to change the law to allow gray seals, which can weigh more than 800 pounds, to be hunted again. The coalition has evolved from the Seal Action Committee, led by friend Peter Krogh, a former dean at Georgetown University who resides in Nantucket. Krogh and Howell tell stories about bait shops on Cape Cod that have shut down and the once-iconic fishing spot, Great Point, now taken over by seals. It's not uncommon to start reeling in a fish, they say, only to have it yanked by a seal.
"'Enough' is not a concept in biology," she said."The environment has a fairly clear number that it will tolerate, our social tolerance may have been exceeded."
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