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Sea Life

Blog - Sea Life

12-15' GW Shark Seen Off Chatham July 5th

July 8, 2011 - A spotter pilot saw a 12-15' great white shark off Chatham on Tuesday, July 5th. That brings to four the number of great whites that have been seen in the waters surrounding Cape Cod this season. The first sighting was May 6 by a fisherman who saw a shark estimated to be about 18 feet long off Martha’s Vineyard. Sightings were also reported on July 1st near Monomoy Island and July 2nd off Truro.

A recently released study of sharks tagged off Cape Cod last year found that one swam along the coast of Georgia, and another entered into the Gulf of Mexico.

Here's the fine print that goes with this ever more common Cape Cod story. Shark attacks on humans are very rare. The last fatality caused by a shark in Massachusetts took place at Hollywood Beach, Buzzards Bay in 1936. Beach goers are advised to pay attention to their surroundings, not to swim in areas where seals are known to congregate, not to swim alone or great distances from shore, and to avoid swimming at dawn and dusk, when most attacks occur.

Here's more from Boston.com.

 
Blog - Sea Life

White Sharks of Chatham

June 24, 2011 - Jean-Michael and Celine Cousteau, son and granddaughter of Jacques (1910-1997), are working with the Brooklyn production company Mammalfish Inc. to make a 1-1.5 hour movie under the working title of, "he White Sharks of Chatham".  Their goal is to raise awareness of the sharks' role in the marine ecosystem. The team will be interviewing people this week, for a week in July and three weeks in August.

Read the full story at thebostonchannel.com.

Blog - Sea Life

Large Great White Shark Seen Off MVY

May 8, 2011 - Chilmark fisherman Jeff Lynch and two friends sighted a great white shark circling the carcass of a minke whale off Gay Head last Friday morning. They estimated the shark to be 20 feet long.  Here's more at Boston.com.

 

Blog - Sea Life

Cape Cod Turtle Rescues

Cape Cod Turtle RescuesDecember 7, 2010 - Cape Cod's turtle rescue season begins as air and water temps cool at the end of October and continues until the end of the year when water and shore become too cold to allow even the largest to survive. Most of the strandings take place along Cape Cod Bay beaches from Dennis to Truro where the geography of the Cape confounds the turtles' internal navigation system that tells them to head south. This year scientists and volunteers are finding unprecedented numbers of juvenile sea turtles, mostly Kemp’s Ridleys. They predict that this year will be one of the worst on record for turtle strandings. Already, more than 170 turtles have been found on the Cape. More than 100 volunteers comb Cape Cod’s beaches for turtles on virtually every high tide. This year they feel a deeper sense of mission because the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico polluted estuaries and coastal bays where Kemp’s Ridleys live. Here's the full story from Beth Daley at Boston.com.

Blog - Sea Life

Junior White Sharks Have Weak Jaws

Junior White Sharks Have Weak Jaws December 6, 2010 - Conventional wisdom has it that white sharks don't like the taste of people. If they bite us by accident they - generally - spit us out. There's evidence to back this. Many attacks by white sharks are just that. One bite and that's it. But it may not be a matter of their taste buds. It may be about their jaws. Most of those attacks are made by adolescent white sharks in the process of learning what to hunt. According to a new study published in the Journal of Biomechanics adolescent jaws are too weak to capture and kill large marine mammals.

"We were surprised that although the teeth and jaws of our sub-adult great white shark looked the part and the muscles were there to drive them, the jaws themselves just couldn't handle the stress associated with big bites on big prey," says study co-author Dr Stephen Wroe, who heads the Computational Biomechanics Research Group in the University of New South Wales (Sydney) School of Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences. The reason for this appears to be that until great whites reach a length of about 3 meters or more their jaws haven't developed enough stiff mineralised cartilage to resist the forces involved.

Lead author of the study Toni Ferrara, a doctoral student, refers to these young sharks as "awkward teenagers" that aren't very successful hunters at this stage. "It seems paradoxical that the iconic jaws of great white sharks, made infamous by the classic Steven Spielberg movie 'Jaws,' are actually rather vulnerable when these sharks are young," she said. "Great white sharks are not born super-predators. They take years to become formidable hunters."

Should knowing that white shark teens can't bite that hard make us feel better? Not really. While a fully grown adult can deliver 4000 lbs of chomping force an adolescent can put a respectable 650lbs behind its incisors.

More from Jennier Viegas at Discovery News.

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