Increased Great White shark sightings off Cape Cod are a people problem and culling seals and sharks won't solve it, say experts
Between July and early August this year, nearly 60 beaches have been temporarily closed and beachgoers asked to leave because of shark sightings around Cape Cod, Massachusetts -- the same pristine beaches where 'Jaws' the film was filmed. Hundreds of Great Whites have been sighted at Cape Cod and authorities have put up warning signs about these misunderstood giants and appointed lifeguards with necessary training to help in case of a shark attack.
Then there's Sharktivity, an app that tracks any pertinent information about these predators in and around the area. While everyone is scrambling for concrete answers as to the reason behind the increased sightings, conservationists fear that attention will turn towards sharks being lured to the shallow waters in search of prey. Locals have expressed the opinion that culling sharks and seals alike may provide the solution, but they're wrong say conservationists. No one will benefit from such a move, not the sharks, not those working tirelessly to conserve the species, and certainly not the locals.
Jane Davenport with the Defenders of Wildlife aks "cui bono? Who benefits?" with regards to the idea. "We have seen far too many culls proposed and carried out as a way to placate certain interest groups or as a way to distract from the real environmental issues. Animals are blamed for being overpopulated when their populations have in fact rebounded to a state approaching their prior abundance," she tells MEA World Wide. The issue here is that of habitat destruction, she added.
"When there is a call to cull sea lions or cormorants on the West Coast because they are eating too many salmon, that is a deliberate distraction from the issue that the dams and habitat destruction, not sea lions and birds, are largely responsible for the salmon runs having been decimated," she notes.
Seals have inhabited Cape Cod for some 4,000 years, but over the past century or so they’ve been scarce in this part of the world. However, with the 1972 Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA) that made killing gray seals and other marine mammals illegal, Cape Cod's seal population has bounced back.
Both sharks and seals were virtually exterminated by wide-scale killing and finding one on the beach until the 1980s was rare because populations of both gray and harbor seals were vanishingly small, said Sharon B. Young, a Senior Strategist for Marine Wildlife, who has previously worked in Cape Cod and with the Marine Life association. The recovery came along after the law was passed in 1972. The seals in the cape today move around, she says. Satellite tagging studies of the seals have shown that they land in New Hampshire from Cod and go back and forth.
"Some gray seals breed in the US and others still return to Sable Island to breed, but they are a single, large, interbreeding population that is shared between our two nations. Though some have suggested culling seals around Cape Cod or the Islands this would be futile, wasting their lives with no gain," she said. The public, too, has no appetite for going back to culling large numbers of seals, she said.
Regina Asmutis-Silvia from the Whale and Dolphin Conservation, North America, echoed a similar sentiment and said the seal population rise could be attributed to various causes, including changes in habitat, coastal erosion, prey, and other more favorable environmental conditions are more likely the reasons for increasing gray seal numbers in the area. The number has increased over the last 10 years, she says and not the last 40, explaining that though the MMPA did have a part to play, it wasn't the law alone that contributed to this boom. If one connected seal populations to shark sightings and felt the need to repeal the Act it would be foolish, she adds.
While this is far more than a black or white problem, one thing is certainly clear - it's a people problem and nature doesn't always agree with us.