March 14, 2017 — Great white sharks are discovering what tourists have known for years: Cape Cod is a great place to spend the summer.
The latest data from a multiyear study of the ocean predators found that the number of sharks in waters off the vacation haven appears to be on the rise, said Greg Skomal, a senior scientist with the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries, and the state’s top shark expert.
But that’s no reason to cancel vacation. The sharks are after seals, not humans, and towns are using the information from the study to keep it that way.
“How long does it stay and where does it go are the questions we’re trying to answer,” Skomal said. “But for the towns, it’s a public safety issue.”
Researchers using a plane and boats spotted 147 individual great white sharks last summer. That was up slightly from 2015, but significantly more than the 80 individual sharks spotted in 2014, the first year of the study, funded by the Atlantic White Shark Conservancy.
Read the full story from the Associated Press at the Gloucester Times