South Beach has reopened after a shark sighting closed the popular Edgartown beach to swimming earlier Tuesday. Edgartown parks department director Jessica McGroarty said that the sighting occurred at 12:15 p.m.
Knowledge of the Atlantic great white shark has been relegated for too long to the fevered imaginations of nervous beachgoers and boaters. With the animals returning to the New England coastline in larger numbers, one state scientist with Vineyard roots is bringing that understanding out of the realm of the mythical and uncovering fascinating insights into this elusive two-ton, apex predator’s behavior.
Three Vineyard fishermen had a real-life Jaws moment last Friday morning when they encountered a great white shark circling a dead minke whale that had become tangled in lobster line in the area known as Devil’s Bridge off Aquinnah.
Three Vineyard fishermen had a real-life Jaws moment on Friday morning when they encountered a great white shark circling a dead minke whale that had become tangled in lobster line in the area known as Devil’s Bridge off Aquinnah.
It’s been 35 years since the movie Jaws forever linked great white shark attacks and Martha’s Vineyard in the popular imagination of the world, yet in all that time no one has ever been attacked.
Then, long after all thought it was safe to go back in the water, along came the U.S. Coast Guard with last week’s holiday boating advice, headed “Shark Advisory” and warning swimmers, kayakers and small boaters of the danger of great white sharks.
Several people reporting seeing a shark off South Beach in Edgartown on Saturday, prompting swimmers to evacuate the water and giving at least one person a scary close encounter.
Eva Bradford, 22, of Westport, Me., was swimming about 30 feet from shore at about 7 p.m. when she heard her two cousins screaming. At first she couldn’t make out what they were shouting about, but soon realized they were yelling “shark.”
Scientists and naturalists working on and near the Vineyard worry that recent reported sightings of great white sharks near the Island will feed fears that get ahead of the facts.
Naturalist Gus Ben David, shark expert Greg Skomal and oceanographer Anthony Wood downplayed the threat to humans from sharks.
