More than 150,000 nice white shark detections had been recorded off of Cape Cod and alongside the coast of Massachusetts final yr, in keeping with the Atlantic White Shark Conservancy tagging tracker.
The whole rely of 159,598 shark detections in 2021 was a document excessive for the sixth straight yr within the Conservancy’s White Shark Logbook, which has detection knowledge from way back to 2010. The earlier all-time excessive from 2020 was 136,135 detections.
The Conservancy has continued to tag extra sharks within the area yearly, leading to extra detections every shark season.
“The greater number of detections logged in 2021 largely reflects the number of tagged sharks at liberty,” stated analysis scientist Megan Winton, noting that “at liberty” means the “total number of tagged sharks swimming around.”
“These tags have a battery life of almost a decade, and last year, 46 additional white sharks were tagged with acoustic transmitters,” she added.
Last yr, 132 whole sharks had been detected, a mean of 1,209 detections per shark.
That compares to 117 whole sharks detected in 2020, a mean of 1,164 detections per apex predator. Dozens of receivers are deployed annually to trace the shark exercise.
Overall, 268 particular person white sharks have been tagged with acoustic transmitters — “think of it like an E-ZPass for sharks,” Winton stated — by the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries since 2010.
“It’s important to remember that the receivers can only detect sharks tagged with acoustic transmitters, and there are still a lot of white sharks out there that haven’t been tagged,” Winton stated. “As scientists, we use the information collected from tagged sharks to present us an concept of what the inhabitants is doing as a complete.
“People should think of the data provided by the Logbook the same way — as a proxy for shark activity off the coast,” she added.
The detection knowledge reveals that white shark exercise is highest alongside Cape Cod, and the Outer Cape particularly, the place seal densities are highest. The high hotspot for shark detections final yr was Chatham Harbor Inlet South, which had 22,480 whole detections — or 14% of all detections in 2021.
August was the busiest month for shark exercise with 57,458 detections. The second-most lively month was September with 32,935 detections, adopted by October with 30,833 detections. Sharks had been detected from May to December.
“White sharks have been detected all along the coast of Massachusetts,” Winton stated. “They don’t occur exclusively off of Cape Cod. Similar to what has been documented at other white shark aggregation sites around the world, there is also a lot of individual variation in the visitation patterns of white sharks, which we are currently investigating in greater detail.”
To try the Conservancy’s logbook, go to shiny.atlanticwhiteshark.org/logbook.
Source: www.bostonherald.com”