Where are white sharks swimming off Maine? A conversation with the state’s new expert

There’s been extra reporting this summer season about sharks. There have been some incidents of individuals bitten by sharks, and in response, extra concerted efforts to observe for them.

The state of Maine this 12 months created a brand new place to higher monitor sharks, which has now been crammed by Matt Davis.

Morning Version host Irwin Gratz spoke with Davis about sharks in Maine. This is an edited model of their dialog.

Gratz: Over an extended stretch of time, now we have seen a rise in white shark populations, appropriate?

Davis: That’s appropriate. So white sharks had been a standard bycatch species and plenty of fisheries previous to the Nineteen Nineties. Within the Nineteen Nineties, there have been some protections put in place federally that made it unlawful to focus on or fish for white sharks in U.S. waters. And with these protections, their populations have been in a position to slowly start restoration over the past a number of many years.

Effectively, what sort of instruments are at your disposal to trace white sharks off the Maine coast?

Right here in Maine, the first device that we use is known as acoustic telemetry. So the final means this works is you’ve got somebody connect one in all these tags to a shark. And that’s normally hooked up on the base of the dorsal fin, which is that enormous fin that you simply see on the again of sharks. Any time one in all these animals carrying a transmitter comes inside a pair hundred meters of one in all your acoustic receivers, it sends what we name a detection, or you may consider it kind of like a radio ping, that sends a timestamp to that receiver to say, Tag 12345 was right here on this date at the moment. On the finish of the 12 months, we will convey these receivers again to shore and obtain the info to see what tagged animals have swam close by. Now there does exist actual time acoustic know-how. So now we have two right here in Maine. One is predicated in Saco Bay, and the opposite one is at present at Popham Seaside. And these really use cell towers to transmit detections in actual time to seaside officers to alert beachgoers if a detection has been, nicely, detected.

Are you able to give us some concept of what you are discovering?

This 12 months is the primary 12 months we have used the stay receiver know-how, in any other case often known as actual time know-how, and people haven’t but detected any sharks in actual time. So far as the what we name passive acoustic receivers, now we have picked up a complete of 39 particular person white sharks within the one and a half years of information that now we have at present.

Of the 39 detections you have seen over the past 12 months and a half, are they starting to color an image of the place the sharks go, the place we see extra of them, fewer of them, and so forth.?

It is actually arduous to say. Once you solely have a pattern dimension of 1 and a half years, it is arduous to say what’s one thing we may think about regular conduct or what could possibly be an anomaly or, you understand, out of the typical. Now that mentioned, a few of our preliminary knowledge does recommend a pair spots to be notably excessive within the variety of sharks detected. That might be close to Hermit Island, which is simply west of Popham Seaside, which final 12 months alone detected 18 completely different particular person white sharks. After which additionally one in all our collaborators had a receiver close to Seguin Island which detected greater than 20 particular person white sharks. The most effective estimates now we have are that these habitats do present vital or necessary entry to prey sources akin to seal populations, as an illustration.

What would you say to folks concerning the issues they’ll and will do to ensure they’re secure once they’re within the water?

So there are fairly a couple of issues that you are able to do and methods you can kind of reduce your probabilities of interacting with a white shark. So a few of these ideas can be to swim with a buddy; sharks usually wish to isolate their prey. So when you’re with a buddy that lessens your probability. Keep away from extreme splashing on the floor as a result of that may mimic the vibrations within the water of an injured animal. Keep away from colleges of fish or seals. These are frequent prey gadgets of white sharks and you don’t need them to by chance mistake you for meals. Keep away from sporting shiny jewellery as a result of that may generally seem just like the scales of the fish. And also you wish to keep away from swimming at daybreak and nightfall.