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Great white sharks have returned to New England
Great white sharks have returned to New England
Maine's first fatal shark attack on record is further evidence of their comeback. It's both a conservation success and a public safety concern—though attacks remain extremely rare.
BY RET TALBOT
PUBLISHED JULY 29, 2020
(National Geographic) ROCKLAND, MAINE Maine saw its first fatal shark attack in the state’s history Monday when a shark killed a 63-year-old New York woman off Bailey Island, Maine, northeast of Portland.
“Based on the information I have from the state of Maine, including photos of tooth fragments, this was definitely caused by a white shark attack,” says Greg Skomal, a leading Atlantic great white shark expert and senior scientist with the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries. Maine officials invited Skomal to consult on the investigation into the attack.
The return of great white sharks to New England over the past two decades is both a conservation success story and an emerging public safety concern. Though it is extremely rare for a shark to attack—much less kill—a human, incidents are on the rise in New England. Since 2012, there have been five attacks in the region, all in Massachusetts. Only two have been fatal: Monday’s, and the death of a boogie boarder off Cape Cod in 2018. Before 2012, the most recent attack occurred in 1936.
It’s not known precisely how many great white sharks are in New England waters, but a tagging program Skomal started in 2009 suggests the number is growing steadily. Data from a five-year population study he launched in 2014 is still being processed, but he tagged a record-breaking 50 white sharks off Cape Cod in 2019. ............(more)
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/2020/07/maine-shark-attack-public-safety-issue-conservation-success/?
2 replies
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= new reply since forum marked as read
...ask Trump at the Task Force Briefing if it's safe for tourists to go in the water in Maine.
That would be epic. 