It was a great white, dorsal-finned, swimming, toothy people-eater......

[DFW]

With apologies to Sheb Wooley.

So, now great white sharks have been spotted not only south of here in Chatham, but also north of here at Race Point, and even on the Bay side of Cape Cod. The oceans are warmer, the seals are plentiful, and so are their main predators, great white sharks. Ferocious though their reputation is, great whites seldom attack people. But swim in an area where there are lots of seals (which our favorite beaches now are), and your chances of a close encounter of the amputative kind go up.

It used to be that the water on the Bay side was warmer and the water on the ocean side was cold. No longer. The water on the ocean side is so warm, no one needs a wet suit any more to go in. On the bay side, the starfish, the carpets of hermit crabs and the horseshoe "crabs" are gone.

I love the fact that I can now spend hours in the water without freezing, but the price the region is paying is high, and the sharks are the least of it (unless one bites me, that is). I love my down time here, but I would have been perfectly happy with the Cape as it was ten or twenty years ago.

[CaliforniaPeggy]

1. My dear DFW!

Sounds like your vacation is going .........well, swimmingly!

Climate change has come to Cape Cod. Is nothing sacred?

Please avoid "the close encounter of the amputative kind!"

[mnhtnbb]

2. We spent a week at the beach at Emerald Isle, NC last month. My husband didn't want to

go in the water--he's a body surfer from way back--because of all the shark attacks off NC this summer.
He did, though, go in the water the last couple of days after the ocean 'calmed down'. It had been really
rough the first few days we were here, and not good for swimming.

He survived! But he did say he was nervous all the time he was in the water.

You know the rules: don't swim in early morning or late afternoon/early evening when fish are feeding.
Stay away from where anyone is fishing: pier, beach, boat, kayak. Don't wear bright colors or
jewelry (both attractive to sharks).

Have fun!

[DFW]

3. We're still alive!

We did do some serious boogie board surfing in the late afternoon, but only at low tide, when the seals keep out to the deeper water.

Our last week is coming up starting tomorrow. When we got here on July 11th, I told my wife, "this will go by as if it were a weekend."

And so it has.

[mnhtnbb]

4. I hear you: no matter how much time we get to spend at the beach, it's never enough.