![]() So what are the best practices to prevent the ocean-going, watersport-loving public from inadvertently becoming stars in a scene from Jaws? How does one best tempt not the fates? Here are some tips. ![]() So don’t put yourself in a position where you could increase the probability of an interaction.” “We know the sharks are not actively attacking or going after people, because we just aren’t having the interactions we would have if that were the case. ![]() He cautions that while attacks are on the rise, he doesn’t think it’s because the animals have developed a sudden taste for bipedal meat. “It’s going to be a situation where we have coexistence,” Greg Skomal, a senior biologist with Massachusetts Marine Fisheries and the guru of all things Atlantic white shark, told me. You’re more likely to be one of the thousands of people around the world who are struck by lightning each year.īut sharks have been around for millions of years, despite our own species decimating as many as a quarter billion of them annually for the fin trade and sport-and they aren’t going away any time soon. Statistically speaking, your chance of being bitten by a shark is still extraordinarily low, and your risk of death from a shark is even less. Nothing could be further from the truth.” “People were thinking that if we’re not stopping people from going in the water, then it must be safe. “I realized we are giving people a false sense of security,” Nate Sears, a natural resource manager for the town of Orleans, Massachusetts, told the Cape Cod Times. This constant close proximity can lead to people becoming complacent about the very real threat sharks present. Chilling numbers, when one considers that in the past few years there have been two attacks in the area, and the animals are frequently spotted just feet from swimmers, boaters, and surfers. Last year, they identified 141 individual great whites in the area–101 of them for the first time. So far this season, scientists have tagged four new sharks in the waters around Chatham, one of them just a few hundred feet off a popular beach. On scenic Cape Cod, Massachusetts, a flourishing seal population has turned the outer beaches from Hamptons-esque tourist playgrounds into the new epicenter of great white shark research.
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