By Will Courtney
staff writer
—
Fatal shark attacks are rare anywhere in the world, with an average of about five recorded each year globally, but in New England, it's virtually unheard of.
Sightings near local beaches, however, have become an annual occurrence.
A sighting Saturday, which was captured by a Coast Guard camera off York Beach, Maine, appears to be a pair of juvenile basking sharks about 12 feet long, said Dr. John Mandelman, a research biologist at the New England Aquarium.
Though basking sharks are considered harmless to humans, with no positive species identification to work with over the weekend, lifeguards at Hampton Beach patrolled the waters for anything unusual.
"Any large animal, depending on what constitutes a threat, is potentially hazardous in their natural environment due to their sheer size," Mandelman said. "But a basking shark would never attack a human. They are called basking sharks because the theory is they bask in the sun. They are passive filter feeders."
Basking sharks are 5 to 7 feet long when born and, in rare instances, grow to as big as 40 feet. While it's early for a sighting so far north, young basking sharks are known to wander close to shore, Mandelman said.
Another sighting a mile off Cape Neddick in southern Maine on Thursday is said to have been a 10-foot porbeagle shark.
Though the sharks are likely chasing a meal and pose little to no threat to humans, these latest shark sightings serve as a reminder that many sharks do swim in local ocean waters.
"There are 15 species of sharks that exist in New England waters that wouldn't be unusual to see in a given instance," Mandelman said. "There are tons of sharks in New England waters that get close to shore across a myriad of species, especially in the summer months."
In 2005, ABC news correspondent Jay Schadler, who has his art studio in Amesbury, was swimming off Plum Island when he reported seeing a shark. It, too, turned out to be a basking shark.
There are other species lurking in the deep off New England, however, including makos, tiger sharks and even great whites.
Last year, scientists were shocked by the sighting of several great white sharks off Monomoy Island near Chatham over Labor Day weekend, five of which were tagged for future study. The sharks passed within 75 yards of Hollywood Beach, prompting officials to close the beach to swimmers.
A group of fishermen looking for tuna off Dartmouth last August hooked a 624-pound mako.
And while local shark attacks aren't common, they are not unprecedented.
Joseph Troy, 16, of Dorchester, was swimming with a friend of his uncle in about 10 feet of water, an estimated 150 yards off Mattapoisett in Buzzards Bay in July 1936, when a white shark grabbed his leg and pulled him down. He was rescued and brought to shore but died in surgery.
His was the last fatal shark attack recorded in New England.
Most documented shark attacks in the U.S. take place in Hawaii or Florida, where a 38-year-old kite surfer lost his life in a shark attack in February.
Local dorsal fin sightings are much more likely to be the aforementioned basking sharks or ocean sunfish, another surface sunbather with a large fin that can be mistaken as a shark.
For swimmers, however, common sense still prevails, Mandelman said.
"Swim in pairs, don't swim at dawn or dusk, and don't swim where marine mammals are present," he said, noting seals can sometimes attract the wrong kind of attention. "The marine mammals tend to be pretty hazardous themselves."
