New England Sharks Still Sharkin’ Around

The hits just keep coming from Cape Cod (and Underwater Times).  I almost can’t keep up with all the Carcharodon carcharias-related news coming out of my old motherland.

The first successful tagging of one of this year’s great whites happened over the weekend off of Martha’s Vineyard (ironically enough, the location for the filming of Jaws).  The shark was non-aggressively investigating a boat participating in the Monster Shark tournament and was tagged by the fishermen aboard the vessel.  The tag will be part of Massachusetts shark researcher Greg Skomal’s work on illuminating the migration patterns of the Atlantic great white population.

The increasing number of shark sightings has prompted the Chatham harbormaster to issue an advisory to bathers in the area.  The advisory is pretty much common sense and comes down to one overriding concept: the sharks are there to eat the seals, so stay away from the seals.  So far no attacks, or even much in the way of close calls (the majority of sightings have been from boats or spotter planes).  This whole story remains refreshingly lacking in hysteria.

Kind of wish I was still up there right now…