Noah Asimow
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.
Sharks

2008

A great white shark was reported twice in Vineyard waters this past week, the most recent off Menemsha Beach on Wednesday evening.

Capt. Buddy Vanderhoop of Aquinnah called the Gazette Wednesday night to say a great white shark had been seen 50 feet off the Menemsha beach at about 6:30 p.m. He said the animal was finning and moving up the beach. Later it moved toward the Brickyard.

Capt. Scott McDowell of Chilmark was out fishing on a charter on Sunday afternoon when, he said, a great white shark came out of the water three times near his new boat.

It was 35 years ago that Peter Benchley’s novel Jaws, about a great white shark that terrorizes a resort town, was first published, starting a run of 44 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list and inspiring the Steven Spielberg film of the same name, filmed off the shores of Martha’s Vineyard.

This week the novelist’s widow, Wendy Benchley, made a visit to the Oak Bluffs selectmen to take aim at what has become, in recent years, a focal point in the battle over shark conservation: the annual Oak Bluffs Monster Shark Tournament.

2007

Most people think of the shark as the ultimate symbol of dread,
giants with cold lifeless eyes who cruise the ocean looking for swimmers
they can tear from limb to limb. The very word itself is used to
describe people in society who prey on others or who engage in deceptive
practices.

There is probably not an animal in the world more despised or feared
then sharks, ranking right down there with snakes and spiders.

2005

Even on an Island that knows a little something about shark
hysteria, the upcoming Boston Big Game Fishing Club Monster Shark
tournament is a frenzied event.

2004

As the sport-fishing boat Cookie Too backed into the slip in Oak
Bluffs harbor on Saturday evening, nervous chatter rippled through the
onlookers who had congregated around the dock.

2002

A live baby great white shark was brought into Menemsha harbor by a
local fishing boat Tuesday morning. And though the fish was only five
feet in length, the fact that it was a great white caused quite a stir.

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