December 29, 2020 — There was precious little good news in 2020, but at least, for the second year in a row, we didn’t see any shark attacks on the Cape.
Unfortunately, the same could not be said for Maine, where a great white shark killed a New York City woman while she was swimming in Harpswell in July. It was the first such attack in the state’s recorded history.
Cape Cod’s first shark attack was in 2012 — the first fatality in Massachusetts in 82 years occurred in Wellfleet in 2018.
The Maine death, along with an increase in the frequency of sightings and detection of tagged white sharks along the New England coastline, helped spur the foundation of the regional New England White Shark Research Consortium this month with the goal of sharing information and research.
With the largest population of great white sharks on the East Coast, Cape Cod is home to cutting-edge research intended to protect the species as well as the millions of beachgoers who come to the peninsula each summer for fun in the surf. While much of that research effort still lies in finding and observing these large marine predators the old-fashioned way with spotter planes and boats, new technologies give scientists hope they will unlock the mysteries of behavior and life history that will allow sharks and humans to coexist.