By PATRICK WHITTLE
SCARBOROUGH, Maine (AP) — Rick Clough spent some 4 many years fishing for lobsters and sea urchins off the Maine coast earlier than recognizing one of many ocean’s most acknowledged predators — a nice white shark.
The roughly 8-foot (2.4-meter) shark, seen off the seaside city of Scarborough in July, stunned Clough, however didn’t make him worry the ocean — although he admitted, “I’m not sure I’d want to go urchin diving now.”
Boaters, beachgoers and fishermen like Clough who spend time within the chilly waters of New England and Atlantic Canada are studying to stay with nice white sharks, the creatures made well-known by the 1975 movie “Jaws.” Sightings of the apex predators are up in locations like Maine, the place they had been as soon as very not often noticed.
Scientists hyperlink the white shark sightings to elevated availability of the seals the sharks feast on, and say beachgoers are typically very protected from shark bites. The sharks can develop shut to twenty ft (6 meters) lengthy, although most don’t get that large.
David Lancaster, a industrial clam digger in Scarborough, used a drone to get a have a look at an roughly 12-foot (3.6-meter) shark close to the city’s famed seashores earlier this month. He described the animal as “magnificent” and “really amazing” to see. However he additionally mentioned the shark’s presence reminded him that swimmers must look out for the massive fish.
Why are nice whites going north?
Sightings of nice whites off Cape Cod, Massachusetts, have change into more and more frequent in recent times, and the Atlantic White Shark Conservancy has documented tons of of the animals over greater than a decade. However new knowledge exhibits the sharks are heading even farther north into New Hampshire, Maine and past, mentioned Greg Skomal, a senior fisheries biologist with the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries and a veteran white shark researcher.
The variety of white sharks detected off Halifax, Nova Scotia, elevated about 2.5 occasions from 2018 to 2022, in response to a paper printed by Skomal and others in Might within the journal Marine Ecology Progress Sequence. Even farther north, the quantity detected within the Cabot Strait that separates Nova Scotia and Newfoundland elevated almost 4 occasions over, the paper mentioned.
Skomal mentioned the typical residency in these northern waters has additionally elevated from 48 days to 70 days, suggesting that white sharks seem like more and more snug farther north.
A key motive for the shift appears to be the profitable conservation of seals off New England and Canada through legal guidelines such because the Marine Mammal Safety Act, which has allowed seals to thrive and supply a meals supply for the predatory sharks, Skomal mentioned.
“It could be a function of a growing prey base,” Skomal mentioned. “And that would be seals.”
Sharks are protected, too
Nice white sharks additionally profit from protections, together with a ban on fishing for them in U.S. federal waters that has stood since 1997. They’re nonetheless thought of weak by the Worldwide Union for the Conservation of Nature.
In Massachusetts, the marine fisheries division mentioned it strengthened its fishing legal guidelines after fishermen in 2024 selected to focus on white sharks anyway. The state prohibited using sure sorts of heavy fishing gear in shoreline areas the place white sharks are mostly discovered.
“We believe here in Massachusetts that targeting white sharks from the beach is not a safe practice,” Skomal mentioned. “Not only because it could result in the death of the shark, but because it could be a public safety issue.”
Regardless of the scale and power of the sharks, harmful encounters between white sharks and people are vanishingly uncommon. Worldwide, there have been fewer than 60 deadly nice white shark bites on people in recorded historical past, in response to the Worldwide Shark Assault File on the Florida Museum of Pure Historical past.
Dwelling with nice whites
The primary recorded deadly shark assault in Maine occurred in 2020 when an ideal white shark killed 63-year-old Julie Dimperio Holowach off Bailey Island.
“It’s an exceedingly rare event. But we’re providing all of this information to mitigate human behavior and hopefully reduce any negative encounters between humans and sharks,” mentioned Ashleigh Novak, analysis coordinator with the Atlantic White Shark Conservancy.
The expansion of social media has made shark sightings go viral in latest summers. A smartphone app referred to as Sharktivity additionally permits shark spotters to report their sightings.
Lancaster, a surfer, mentioned residing with nice whites is simply one thing individuals in New England are going to have to regulate to.
“It’s crazy that they are around, as fishermen and surfers, and something we have to accept,” Lancaster mentioned. “It’s in the back of your head, but you have to accept it.”
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Related Press photojournalist Robert F. Bukaty contributed to this story in Scarborough, Maine.
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This story was supported by funding from the Walton Household Basis. The AP is solely chargeable for all content material.
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