SCARBOROUGH, Maine — Rick Clough spent some 4 a long time fishing for lobsters and sea urchins off the Maine coast earlier than recognizing one of many ocean’s most acknowledged predators — a great white shark.
The roughly 8-foot (2.4-meter) shark, seen off the seaside city of Scarborough in July, shocked Clough, however didn’t make him concern the ocean — although he admitted, “I’m undecided I’d wish 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 film “Jaws.” Sightings of the apex predators are up in locations like Maine, the place they had been as soon as very hardly ever noticed.
Scientists hyperlink the white shark sightings to elevated availability of the seals the sharks feast on, and say beachgoers are usually very protected from shark bites. The sharks can develop shut to twenty ft (6 meters) lengthy, although most do not get that huge.
David Lancaster, a business clam digger in Scarborough, used a drone to get a take 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 “actually superb” to see. However he additionally stated the shark’s presence reminded him that swimmers must look out for the massive fish.
Sightings of nice whites off Cape Cod, Massachusetts, have turn into more and more frequent lately, and the Atlantic White Shark Conservancy has documented hundreds of the animals over greater than a decade. However new knowledge reveals the sharks are heading even farther north into New Hampshire, Maine and past, stated 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 instances from 2018 to 2022, in accordance with a paper revealed by Skomal and others in Could within the journal Marine Ecology Progress Collection. Even farther north, the quantity detected within the Cabot Strait that separates Nova Scotia and Newfoundland elevated practically 4 instances over, the paper stated.
Skomal stated the common residency in these northern waters has additionally elevated from 48 days to 70 days, suggesting that white sharks look like more and more comfy farther north.
A key purpose for the shift appears to be the profitable conservation of seals off New England and Canada by way of 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 stated.
“It could possibly be a perform of a rising prey base,” Skomal stated. “And that may be seals.”
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-about susceptible by the Worldwide Union for the Conservation of Nature.
In Massachusetts, the marine fisheries division stated 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 imagine right here in Massachusetts that concentrating on white sharks from the seaside isn’t a protected follow,” Skomal stated. “Not solely as a result of it may end result within the loss of life of the shark, however as a result of it could possibly be a public security challenge.”
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 accordance with the Worldwide Shark Assault File on the Florida Museum of Pure Historical past.
The primary recorded fatal shark attack in Maine occurred in 2020 when an amazing white shark killed 63-year-old Julie Dimperio Holowach off Bailey Island.
“It’s an exceedingly uncommon occasion. However we’re offering all of this info to mitigate human conduct and hopefully cut back any adverse encounters between people and sharks,” stated 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 known as Sharktivity additionally permits shark spotters to report their sightings.
Lancaster, a surfer, stated residing with nice whites is simply one thing folks in New England are going to have to regulate to.
“It is loopy that they’re round, as fishermen and surfers, and one thing we have now to simply accept,” Lancaster stated. “It is at the back of your head, however you need to settle for 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 liable for all content material.
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