Beachgoers ordered out of the water in Truro until tomorrow after great white sharks were seen feasting on a dead whale need to brush up on their swimming safety.
The toothsome critters, one expert said, are settling in along Cape Cod.
“You’re going to see more and more sharks in the area,” Cathrine Macort of the Center for Coastal Studies in Provincetown said last night. “It’s time to proceed with caution. One theory is the seal population is rebounding and so, too, are the sharks.”
Macort said she was part of the group that filmed the sharks ripping into the carcass of an 11-foot minke whale off Truro this week. She said they dropped a GoPro waterproof camera in the ocean and caught the “feed” live.
Truro officials quickly moved to shut down three beaches to swimming until tomorrow. Those beaches are Noons, Cold Storage and Beach Point.
A spokesman at the Harbormaster’s office in Truro said the whale carcass was “hauled out at Noons Landing” yesterday morning by DPW workers.
An assistant harbormaster added six great whites were spotted attacking the remains of the whale.
Gregory Skomal, the state’s senior marine fisheries biologist, said on Boston Herald Radio this week that 10 great white sharks have been tagged so far this year around Cape Cod and there are about 40 — half male, half female — in these waters.
“We think the white shark population is increasing based on the data we’ve got,” Skomal said, as he called in from a boat chasing a great white Thursday just off Chatham Inlet.
As for being safe around sharks, Skomal said swimmers need to be aware of their surroundings.
“It’s important that people realize the probability of a shark attack is very low. The last fatal shark attack was in 1936. But at the same time, if you are going to swim in areas where white sharks are abundant because of the seals, be careful. Very careful,” he said. “I wouldn’t go out into deep water. I wouldn’t swim alone. Be aware of where you are and where these sharks are.”
He added the reason he’s studying sharks is to “provide information to the swimming public so they know where these animals are.”
By: Joe Dwinell (Boston Herald).
Photo: ABC News.
Review: Emerging Market Formulations & Research Unit, FLAGSHIP RECORDS.
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