Seacoast Shark Watch
I have grown up on the Seacoast of New Hampshire for my entire life and come from a family of fishermen that called Gloucester their home. In 1991, I asked my grandfather Captain Joe Novello, his experiences with Great White sharks while he fished the coast of New England. I was a surfer and exploring the coast of New England for new breaks that had yet to be discovered. At the time it was an interesting topic even though I had never seen any signs of sharks in my travels from Rhode Island to Maine. He told me that sharks weren't going to be an issue at the time but "give it a few years, the great whites will be back since the seals are coming back". Captain Novello had seen sharks in is his many years of fishing but they were always well off shore and few and far between. However, he predicted that in my lifetime the rebound of seal populations would bring these large sharks to our coastlines and when they did they would definitely be a concern.
Seals and the area fishermen have always been at odds with each other. Seals eat a lot of fish and they also carry cod worm, a parasitic nematode that lives in the seal and then gets into the flesh of the fish. The seals eat the fish with the nematode and the cycle repeats. Almost all inshore fish on the New England coast carry these nematodes that must be removed during a process called candling. In the past, states like Maine had bounties on seals and fishermen would shoot them anytime they saw them out swimming near traps or fishing grounds. That all changed with the Marine Mammal Protection Act of 1972 which outlawed the harm of any marine mammal.
Fast forward almost 50 years later and the New England coast has large seal populations that extend from Cape Cod into Maine. With the increase in seals the Great White sharks have started to come back into our waters. First it was a few sharks in the mid 2010s and now it has progressed to be an estimate of around 900 great white sharks off the coast of Cape Cod. These sharks are displaying hunting techniques that are new and innovative. They are hunting in shallow waters and waiting for the seals to make mistakes as they linger just off the beach. Unfortunately, the uptick of great white sharks has led to a handful of attacks on humans and two fatal shark attacks in the last 5 years.
We have started the Seacoast Shark Watch to help communities and water enthusiasts to help get a better understanding of where sharks have been spotted or incidents of attacks on seals have been reported. Currently much of this information is only shared after the fact.
Seals and the area fishermen have always been at odds with each other. Seals eat a lot of fish and they also carry cod worm, a parasitic nematode that lives in the seal and then gets into the flesh of the fish. The seals eat the fish with the nematode and the cycle repeats. Almost all inshore fish on the New England coast carry these nematodes that must be removed during a process called candling. In the past, states like Maine had bounties on seals and fishermen would shoot them anytime they saw them out swimming near traps or fishing grounds. That all changed with the Marine Mammal Protection Act of 1972 which outlawed the harm of any marine mammal.
Fast forward almost 50 years later and the New England coast has large seal populations that extend from Cape Cod into Maine. With the increase in seals the Great White sharks have started to come back into our waters. First it was a few sharks in the mid 2010s and now it has progressed to be an estimate of around 900 great white sharks off the coast of Cape Cod. These sharks are displaying hunting techniques that are new and innovative. They are hunting in shallow waters and waiting for the seals to make mistakes as they linger just off the beach. Unfortunately, the uptick of great white sharks has led to a handful of attacks on humans and two fatal shark attacks in the last 5 years.
We have started the Seacoast Shark Watch to help communities and water enthusiasts to help get a better understanding of where sharks have been spotted or incidents of attacks on seals have been reported. Currently much of this information is only shared after the fact.