SHARK ALERT! Four 11-foot Great Whites spotted off New England coast amid surge in attacks
In the past few months, a string of shark attacks has been reported across the US. Just when one may think it's safe to go back into the sea and swim another attack comes in. Four great white sharks were spotted over three days off the New England coast amid a spate of horrifying attacks along the Eastern Seaboard. The four apex predator sightings were recorded from Cape Cod using the Sharktivity app, which is based in Massachusetts and tracks great white sharks' activity.
The first sighting occurred on July 11. An 11-foot great white shark which is the largest predatory fish, growing to 21 feet long and weighing up to 5,000 pounds was spotted in Chatham Harbor just after 4:45 pm local time. The following day, a shark, named Luke, was detected close to the shoreline in the Gulf of Maine on July 12 and a beast, known as Granese, was reported off Nauset Beach on July 13. A fourth shark named Kendal was also spotted on July 13, The Sun reported.
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According to the Sharktivity app, there have been a string of sightings off the Cape Cod coast in recent days. Five sharks were detected on July 9 at various points on Nauset Beach. Executive director of the Rhode Island-based Atlantic Shark Institute, John Dodd, told the Boston Globe: “We see more detections, but we also have many more receivers. “We know these sharks have been in this area for a long, long time… millions of years. We’re getting much better at detecting them now.”
Suffolk County Parks officials suspended swimming at Smith Beach, Long Island due to "dangerous marine life". "Notice for Smith Point Beach: Swimming has been suspended at this time due to dangerous marine life activity on Wednesday, July 13, 2022", they wrote in a tweet.
Notice for Smith Point Beach: Swimming has been suspended at this time due to dangerous marine life activity on Wednesday July 13, 2022.
— Suffolk County Parks (@SuffolkParks) July 13, 2022
The decision to suspend swimming at Smith Beach came after two men were bitten by a shark on the same day, July 13 on different Long Island beaches. In the first incident, which happened at 7 am, a surfer named Shawn Donnely was bitten by what he thought was a sand Tiger shark in the water just east of the main beach at Smith Point County Park, officials said at a press conference.
Hours later, in the second attack, a man from Arizona was bitten just after 6 pm at Seaview Beach, in the Ocean Beach section of Fire Island, NBC New York reported. The first shark attack at Smith Point since the beach opened in 1959 was reported earlier this month after a Long Island lifeguard, named Zack Gallo was bitten in the chest and right hand by a 4 to 5-foot-long shark while conducting an ocean training exercise.
Earlier, Megan Winton, of the Atlantic White Shark Conservancy, told reporters at a conference held on June 29 that the population of great whites tends to "increase sharply" in July. Long Island has experienced a great number of shark sightings, with a record-breaking 26 sightings in Nassau County alone last summer.
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Meanwhile, great white shark detections off Cape Cod increased by 24% in 2021 over the previous year, according to data posted by the Atlantic White Shark Conservancy. However, experts say the surge in sightings could simply be due to recent advances in shark-tracking technology. “We know these sharks have been in this area for a long, long time … millions of years,” Jon Dodd, executive director of the Rhode Island-based Atlantic Shark Institute, told the Globe. “We’re getting much better at detecting them.”