August 1, 2012 — The booming, federally protected seal population basking in Bay State waters will only bring more hungry, dead-eyed great white sharks closer to shore — where they can strike in as little as 6 feet of water, experts warn.
State wildlife officials said yesterday they’re tracking nine great whites — the most they’ve ever had tagged — but it’s not clear whether that lethal group includes the stealthy predator that attacked a bodysurfer off Ballston Beach in Truro on Monday afternoon, splattering blood on the beach.
The victim, Christopher Myers, is recovering from leg injuries at Massachusetts General Hospital in what officials called the first attack by a great white in Massachusetts since a fatal strike in 1936.
Swarming the Cape coast in pockets from Eastham to Chatham, seals — a protected species for the past four decades — are being blamed for the sudden spike in shark sightings.
“Nature is out of balance,” said Michael Snell, a former Truro beach commissioner. “Until we start harvesting seals, we are going to keep having these kind of problems.”
Wildlife experts warn that seal preservation and swimmer safety are on a collision course.
“It’s a smoke signal to start thinking about our conservation policies, and whether they’re really moving us toward sustainability or something else,” said Brian Rothschild, a marine science professor at the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth.
“Society has some tough decisions to make,” he said. “Most people believe the seals are attracting the sharks, and the only thing they can do is control the seal population. But to do that would require a revision of the Marine Mammal Protection Act, and that’s a big deal.”
The 1972 federal law forbids killing marine mammals, with rare and limited exceptions. The result, experts said, has laid out a blubbery feast of seals all the way up to Canada’s Maritime Provinces.
Prior to the law, towns offered bounties on seals, controlling their numbers as a means of conservation similar to deer hunting, Rothschild said. But 40 years of strictly enforced federal protection have left the waters thick with shark bait, and locals have taken notice.
Greg Skomal, a shark biologist with the Massachusetts Department of Fish and Game’s Division of Marine Fisheries, said his program has been monitoring the shark population in Bay State waters since 2009. He sees no retreat in the numbers — and humans have to learn to live with it.
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