Throughout the last 10 years, the Atlantic White Shark Conservancy has identified around 600 sharks off the coast of Cape Cod. Now, the sharks are swimming north and just recently, one was detected by an AWSC shark-detection buoy near Marblehead.
According to TJ Cullinane of Friends of Lynn and Nahant Beaches, which is sponsoring that buoy for the summer, one of the reasons the sharks are in the area is due to seals.
In Cape Cod, the gray seal population increased, which led to an increase of sharks. But, the smaller sharks are being pushed out of that area and moving north, Cullinane said.
“We’re talking 8- to 9-foot sharks that are about 15 years old, that really aren’t quite capable of taking on a seal, sometimes they still try but for the most part, they’re fish eaters and there’s a lot of fish in our area for them to eat on,” Cullinane said.
Sharks swimming near Lynn, Nahant, Swampscott, and Marblehead aren’t currently putting humans in danger, he said.
There is also now a growing seal population in the North Shore, he said.
“Recognizing that, the [AWSC] started placing buoys up on the North Shore, and they offer sponsorship, which kind of helps them maintain the buoy,” Cullinane said.
The buoy that Friends of Lynn and Nahant Beaches are sponsoring is about a mile from Marblehead, he said. The buoys are connected to the Sharktivity app from AWSC, which tracks sharks that they have tagged.
Through the app, users can see each shark’s activity from the past year, month, week, and two days.
Friends of Lynn and Nahant Beaches want to take what it learns from its sponsored buoy and bring it to schools in the area, Cullinane said. They are working with Lynn Public Schools Assistant Director of Science Lia Stelljes and Sierra Muñoz, the outreach coordinator at the Northeastern University Marine Science Center in Nahant, to make this happen, he said.
“Is there a way that we can leverage this technology and put it in the curriculum and get kids excited about marine science?” Cullinane said. “We’re a coastal town, we have cool creatures living in our water. Let’s leverage these assets to promote science within the school system.”
Muñoz said the center has collaborated with Lynn Public Schools and Johnson School in Nahant to teach students about what the center is researching and discovering.
When Friends of Lynn and Nahant Beaches reached out about this potential collaboration, she said she was excited.
“It sounded like a really cool opportunity to incorporate basically a local example for students of collecting environmental data, collecting and incorporating citizen data,” Muñoz said.
According to Muñoz, another reason there are more sharks swimming further up the coast may be the warming ocean waters.
“We are seeing some pretty significant high water temperatures and trends, I think it’s about as warm as we’ve seen it,” she said. “The way that I explained it to students is that the water temperature helps change where the animals are moving, then those animals are followed by the bigger animals that they want to eat.”
Based on current trends, the waters will only continue to warm, she said.
“It’s kind of the perfect storm of these sorts of food webs and also the changes in ocean temperatures and climate shifts,” Muñoz said.
