'Shark!': Cape Cod Recoils in a Summer of Sightings, Real and Imagined

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

WELLFLEET, Mass. — Anxiety is hanging over the Cape Cod beaches this summer.

It is in lifeguards’ gazes as they scan the water.

It is in the three young men playing a game by the shoreline who do not swim out to retrieve their ball when it lands too far out in the surf.

It is in the panicked stampede out of the water when a seal swims by and someone on the beach mistakenly yells the word already hovering in the back of everyone’s mind: “Shark!”

It is feeling more than a little like Amity Island on the Cape this season.

Nearly a year ago, in September, a 26-year-old man named Arthur Medici died after he was bitten by a great white shark while boogie boarding on a beach in the Outer Cape town of Wellfleet.

There had not been a fatal shark attack in Massachusetts since 1936, but in recent years many people on the Cape had thought it was only a matter of time. Great white sharks had become increasingly prevalent along the Cape’s beaches, attracted by the expanding population of gray seals. A tourist had been bitten in 2012, and a month before Mr. Medici’s death, a doctor was bitten, surviving but requiring nine operations.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/shark-cape-cod-recoils-in-a-summer-of-sightings-real-and-imagined/ar-AAG3Stm?li=BBnbcA1

[sdfernando]

1. They had better find Quint...and quickly! /NT

[jpak]

2. They've been spotted on the Maine coast as well

Where they are not supposed to be...

[virgogal]

3. Sharks live in the water,bears live in the woods...that's the way it is.

[DFW]

4. I just spent a month on the Outer Cape

I was in Truro, adjacent to Wellfleet.

There were shark sightings, but everyone was sensible, left the water at the first indication or news of shark proximity, didn't try to approach seals swimming nearby (they do come close).

It was definitely NOT like Amity Island. Someone is looking for some sensationalist headlines. To a shark, a seal is a gourmet dinner, where humans are the equivalent of chewing on leftover chicken bones. Great Whites are curious by nature, and will check out something they think might be of interest, but they don't seek us out. Wearing a wet suit increases your chances of being mistaken for a seal, but, to put it in modern jargon, we are not the droids they are looking for. The closest shark attack we heard of while we were there was in Florida.