{"id":70205,"date":"2025-08-09T14:42:08","date_gmt":"2025-08-09T14:42:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/70205\/"},"modified":"2025-08-09T14:42:08","modified_gmt":"2025-08-09T14:42:08","slug":"white-shark-tagged-in-cape-cod-bay-for-1st-time-in-research-history","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/70205\/","title":{"rendered":"White shark tagged in Cape Cod Bay for 1st time in research history"},"content":{"rendered":"

Scientists in Massachusetts have tagged their first white shark of the season \u2014 marking the first time one has been tagged in a previously unexplored area of the state<\/a>. <\/p>\n

The announcement comes after Greg Skomal, senior fisheries scientist at the Division of Marine Fisheries<\/a>, said his research on white sharks\u2019 \u201cfine-scale behavior \u2014 specifically, predatory behavior,\u201d would expand into other parts of the Atlantic Ocean off of Cape Cod this summer. <\/p>\n

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<\/a> by scientists on boats and pilots on shark-spotter planes. <\/p>\n

This year, those studies have gone to the other side \u2014 on the Cape Cod Bay, where the first shark of the season was tagged<\/a> Thursday. It also marked the first time a camera tag has been deployed in the Cape Cod Bay. <\/p>\n

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). <\/p>\n

The comparison, the scientists hope, will show \u201cdifferences in the risk posed by sharks to recreational water users,\u201d the AWSC said. <\/p>\n

Skomal previously told MassLive that scientists are already aware of some key differences in shark populations on either side of Cape Cod. <\/p>\n

They know that in the Cape Cod Bay, the sharks aren\u2019t eating seals \u2014 and they aren\u2019t coming nearly as close to shore. <\/p>\n

\u201cWhite sharks in Cape Cod Bay don\u2019t appear to be approaching shore because they\u2019re feeding on fish, like striped bass,\u201d Skomal said. <\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you\u2019re feeding on striped bass, your behavior is going to be a little bit different than if you\u2019re feeding close-proximity to seals on the Outer Cape,\u201d Skomal said.<\/p>\n

He added that there are less sharks detected by the acoustic receivers on the bayside, and the ones that are seen are \u201csmaller, more juveniles than we see along the Outer Cape.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe expect to see those differences, and we\u2019re pretty excited to investigate that,\u201d Skomal told MassLive in June.<\/p>\n

Since Friday, Aug. 1, AWSC has cataloged around 29 white shark sightings around Cape Cod, along with two signs of shark predation.<\/p>\n

Two tagged sharks made separate appearances around the Cape between Wednesday and Thursday, according to the conservancy\u2019s shark-tracking app Sharktivity<\/a>. <\/p>\n

One of them was a 10-foot-long male white shark named Quadrilateral<\/a>, first tagged on Sept. 12, 2023. He was detected off North Beach Island and Chatham at around 9:23 p.m. on Aug. 6.<\/p>\n

And after last week\u2019s massive sighting in Cape Cod Bay, where 10 sharks were spotted,<\/a> 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. <\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

If you purchase a product or register for an account through a link on our site, we may receive compensation. By using this site, you consent to our User Agreement<\/a> and agree that your clicks, interactions, and personal information may be collected, recorded, and\/or stored by us and social media and other third-party partners in accordance with our Privacy Policy.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Scientists in Massachusetts have tagged their first white shark of the season \u2014 marking the first time one…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":70206,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[79,201],"class_list":{"0":"post-70205","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-science","9":"tag-wildlife"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70205","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=70205"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70205\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/70206"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=70205"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=70205"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=70205"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}