Man-Eater

by Tom King
Originally published in the January/February 2019 issue of Tail Fly Fishing Magazine

On Saturday, September 15th, 2018, Arthur Medici, a 26-year-old engineering student living in Revere, Massachusetts, was boogie-boarding off Cape Cod’s Newcomb Hollow beach in Wellfleet when he was fatally attacked by a great white shark.

Shark fatalities are statistically rare. According to the Florida Program for Shark Research at the Florida Museum of Natural History, in 2017 there were 88 cases of unprovoked shark attacks on humans worldwide (slightly higher than the five-year average of 83 annual incidents). Of those 88 attacks, there were five fatalities.

Before Arthur Medici, the last shark fatality in Massachusetts had occurred on July 25th, 1936, off Mattapoisett, near New Bedford, when Joseph Troy Jr., 16, from Dorchester, was attacked while swimming. After an investigation by Dr. Hugh M. Smith, former director of the US Bureau of Fisheries, Troy’s death was attributed to a “man-eater” (what is now called a great white shark).

Although fatalities are rare, shark attacks in Massachusetts have been on the rise in recent years. On July 30th, 2012, a white shark bit the feet and leg of a body-surfer at Ballston Beach, Truro, on Cape Cod’s eastern side. He recovered.

In 2014, two female kayakers were observing seals off Plymouth when a white shark attacked. Their kayaks were very close together. The shark came up from beneath and knocked both women overboard. A state shark biologist who investigated the incident told me that the bite marks on one of the kayaks indicated it was a predatory bite—as opposed to an investigatory bite—as the teeth had penetrated deeply into the cockpit of the well-made kayak. The woman in the struck kayak, he said, was very lucky to have escaped unscathed.

There have been several other attacks since.

 

 

 

Let’s take a look at the background information on why shark attacks are increasing in Massachusetts.

 

Worldwide, a few of the larger shark species have fatally attacked humans. One of the leaders in fatal attacks is the great white, whose scientific name is  Carcharodon carcharias. For centuries, the great white was commonly known as the “man-eater.” After World War Two, it came to be referred to as the white shark, the great white shark, the white pointer, white death, and other similar common names. Yet very little was known about the elusive creature. It wasn’t until the late 1960s that filmmaker Peter Gimbel captured the first underwater footage of the great white—and that required four months and 12,000 miles of travel. Gimbel’s 1971 documentary,  Blue Water, White Death, was doubtless a source of research for author Peter Benchley. Benchley’s 1974 bestseller,  Jaws, along with Steven Speilberg’s 1975 blockbuster film adaptation, made the great white shark a household name and caused many people to be afraid to go into the water.

Fully grown, great whites are 16 to 20 feet long and weigh 2,500 to 5,500 pounds. They have large triangular serrated teeth that are well-adapted to ripping meat off seals and whale carcasses, which are the preferred meals of the larger whites. Several years ago a dead whale off Provincetown, in Massachusetts Bay, had six different great whites come up from the depths to feast on its carcass. More recently, on October 14th, 2018, a boat owned by Hyannis Whale Watcher Cruises was on a tour with about 160 passengers when it spotted a dead finback whale with two great whites attached to it. One of the sharks was 18 feet long.

This shark species can function in water temperatures from 43 to 80 degrees Fahrenheit. That is one of the widest temperature ranges for any shark, and is the reason an occasional great white is spotted in New England in midwinter.

Enacted in 1972, the Marine Mammal Protection Act has resulted in a population explosion of grey seals in Massachusetts, especially along Cape Cod’s remote eastern beaches. Seal surveys are difficult to conduct because they can’t be done in a day and also because seals move around unpredictably. However, drone surveys estimate there are now 50,000 to 70,000 seals in Massachusetts waters. This massive increase in seals is a big attraction for their predator, the great white shark, which itself received federal protection in 1997. The combination of protecting both the seals and their predators is a good example of “Today’s solution is tomorrow’s problem.”  It’s especially a problem for those who presently frolic in Massachusetts waters, as humans are about the same size as seals.

A decade ago there were early signs of a potential problem developing. On Labor Day weekend in 2008, tuna spotter pilot Wayne Davis observed a rarely seen great white off Chatham, and he took definitive photos. On September 2nd, 2009, pilot George Breen spotted two large sharks off Chatham. The sharks were identified later that day as great whites by Dr. Greg Skomal, senior biologist at the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries (DMF). Three days later, Skomal, along with DMF shark researcher John Chisholm and commercial tuna fishermen Captain Billy Chaprales and his son, Nick, were able able to place satellite pop-up tags into two great whites off Chatham, close to shore. At this writing, Dr. Skomal and his colleagues have tagged 146 great whites for the purpose of research.

Several types of devices have been used to tag great whites. Some of the tags send information via satellite, while others transmit acoustic signals that are collected by hydrophones (underwater microphones). As the the great white population off Massachusetts has increased over the years, the taggers have become more skilled at placing tags. However, because of a lack of tagging funds—each tag costs thousands of dollars—coupled with the increase in sharks as well as the relatively small tagging area, there are many untagged great whites out there. For example, if spotter pilot Wayne Davis were to see 10 untagged whites in a day, yet only three tags were available on the tagging boat, then seven sharks would go untagged. Many of the untagged sharks are filmed with a GoPro camera from the tagging boat and are then cataloged. They are identified by their physical characteristics.

The tagging and filming takes place in a relatively small area, limited by the range of the tagging boat. The tagging boat is located at Chatham, on easterly Cape Cod, so it can’t go to every shark sighting in the state. Tagging takes place along the oceanside beaches of Chatham, Orleans, Eastham, Wellfleet, and Truro. Some of the sharks are trailed for miles in the shallower sandy-bottom areas and tagged in 4 to 6 feet of water close to shore—often right in front of clueless beachgoers. (The Atlantic White Shark Conservancy, a private non-profit enterprise, has been an enormous help, monetarily and physically, in assisting the state tagging program.)

The Cape Cod tagging area is not so much an area where the white sharks regularly linger, but rather is an area where the nomadic whites visit to participate in the seal buffet present there. An adult great white probably has to eat about three seals a month when available. Most of these whites eventually will travel along the coast after feeding and could return for a meal—or find one elsewhere.

On Cape Cod, people both ashore and in boats have videoed attacks on seals by great whites. These incidents have increased yearly. YouTube now hosts a number of videos of smaller great whites in the 8- to 10-foot range snatching striped bass and bluefish from anglers’ lines. Shark warning signs are posted at a number of Cape Cod beaches to alert people to the danger of a possible interspecies mishap.

Right now the situation between the seals and great whites exists primarily on Cape Cod’s easterly beaches, but a number of sightings and incidents (such as with the female kayakers off Plymouth) suggest that it could be spreading. Given enough time, the situation may exist along the entire New England coast.

When great whites enter Massachusetts Bay, they are harder to spot. The water is deeper and darker than it is on the easterly side of Cape Cod, where it is easier to see them from the spotter plane. White sharks cruising on the surface in Massachusetts Bay have resulted in beach closings as far north as Plymouth.

Marshfield Harbormaster Mike DiMeo places five hydrophones along the beaches close to shore, from Scituate to Plymouth. When an acoustic-tagged shark gets within a few hundred yards of a submerged hydrophone, the signal it transmits identifies the shark and the time it was there. The great white pings DiMeo has recorded have increased yearly. Untagged sharks are not detected, so there are likely more great whites in this area than what the hydrophones indicate. The hydrophones have to be retrieved and checked to acquire the data. A month or more could elapse between checks. This is good for shark research but is not useful information for beachgoers. DiMeo told me he plans to keep pushing for real-time hydrophones. “I feel this is the new norm and society wants real-time information.”

On August 3rd, 2017, a paddle-boarder was attacked in 3 feet of water by a great white on an East Cape beach; his board was damaged from the bite. In another August 2017 incident, a great white attacked a seal amid bathers very close to shore, sending everyone swimming and running to get out of the water.

On August 15th, 2018, a 61-year-old man was standing in shallow water off Truro, about 30 yards from shore, near at least 10 seals, when he was bitten on the leg and torso by a great white. He was med-flighted to Tufts Medical Center in Boston, where he underwent a prolonged recovery.

After that close call, many people started to sense it was only a matter of time until a fatality happened. They didn’t have to wait long. One month later Arthur Medici was attacked. The shark severed Medici’s femoral artery, and he died on the way to the hospital.

Although fatal shark attacks are statistically rare, if the current trend of seals, white sharks, and people in the water in Massachusetts continues, we won’t have to wait 82 years for another fatality.

Bio: Captain Tom King has been a longtime angler in the Massachusetts area, purchasing his first boat in 1949. Tom has been a fly fishing guide in Boston Harbor for striped bass, and he has also guided offshore for sharks. For a number of years Tom wrote a column for  On the Water. He has given many public presentations on New England’s shark species.

 

Further Reading and Viewing

Peter Gimbel’s 1971 documentary, Blue Water, White Death, is widely considered the best shark movie ever made. You can purchase it as a DVD on Amazon or buy or rent it through iTunes.

One of the crew members on Gimbel’s expedition was the late National Book Award-winning nature writer Peter Matthiessen, who was hired as the voyage historian. Matthiessen’s account of the voyage, Blue Meridian:  The Search for the Great White Shark, is available through Amazon.

 

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