Scientists in Massachusetts have tagged their first white shark of the season — marking the first time one has been tagged in a previously unexplored area of the state.
The announcement comes after Greg Skomal, senior fisheries scientist at the Division of Marine Fisheries, said his research on white sharks’ “fine-scale behavior — specifically, predatory behavior,” would expand into other parts of the Atlantic Ocean off of Cape Cod this summer.
In their past 15 years of research off Cape Cod, the scientists have exclusively studied white sharks off the Outer Cape with tools like acoustic, satellite and camera tagging by scientists on boats and pilots on shark-spotter planes.
This year, those studies have gone to the other side — on the Cape Cod Bay, where the first shark of the season was tagged Thursday. It also marked the first time a camera tag has been deployed in the Cape Cod Bay.
Scientists will use the video footage and data recorded by the tags to learn more about white shark habitats and behavior on the bayside, and will be compared with other footage captured on the Outer Cape , according to the Atlantic White Shark Conservancy (AWSC).
The comparison, the scientists hope, will show “differences in the risk posed by sharks to recreational water users,” the AWSC said.
Skomal previously told MassLive that scientists are already aware of some key differences in shark populations on either side of Cape Cod.
They know that in the Cape Cod Bay, the sharks aren’t eating seals — and they aren’t coming nearly as close to shore.
“White sharks in Cape Cod Bay don’t appear to be approaching shore because they’re feeding on fish, like striped bass,” Skomal said.
“When you’re feeding on striped bass, your behavior is going to be a little bit different than if you’re feeding close-proximity to seals on the Outer Cape,” Skomal said.
He added that there are less sharks detected by the acoustic receivers on the bayside, and the ones that are seen are “smaller, more juveniles than we see along the Outer Cape.”
“We expect to see those differences, and we’re pretty excited to investigate that,” Skomal told MassLive in June.
Since Friday, Aug. 1, AWSC has cataloged around 29 white shark sightings around Cape Cod, along with two signs of shark predation.
Two tagged sharks made separate appearances around the Cape between Wednesday and Thursday, according to the conservancy’s shark-tracking app Sharktivity.
One of them was a 10-foot-long male white shark named Quadrilateral, first tagged on Sept. 12, 2023. He was detected off North Beach Island and Chatham at around 9:23 p.m. on Aug. 6.
And after last week’s massive sighting in Cape Cod Bay, where 10 sharks were spotted, eight sharks were seen off the coast of Orleans and neighboring Brewster between 9:56 a.m. and 11:08 a.m. on Aug. 2.
One shark was seen a quarter of a mile off the coast of Skaket Beach, followed by another off the coast of Crosby Landing Beach in Brewster. The other five sightings were off Ellis Landing Beach.
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