The Summer Everyone Saw the Sharks

[marmar]

The Summer Everyone Saw the Sharks
After a season of bites, panicked beaches, and annoyed researchers, it’s clear sharks are back in New York. We’re not ready for what that means.

BY RUSSELL JACOBS
SEPT 01, 20225:45 AM




(Slate) About 10 years ago, I saw a shark leap out of the water from somewhere near Beach 108th Street in Rockaway Beach, Queens. I had come out with friends to swim on a hot weekend day and just happened to be gazing out at the right moment. The shark breached, was airborne for a single second, and then landed with an inaudible splash about a mile from shore.

When I told my compatriots, none of them believed me. “Perhaps,” one suggested, “you saw a dolphin?”

Why was it so hard to believe that there might be a shark in the Atlantic Ocean? Don’t they live there? Sure, my friends said—everybody knows that there are sharks in the ocean. But I definitely hadn’t seen one jump out of the water in New York City.

That conversation would go differently now. This summer, the reality that New Yorkers share the ocean with an increasing number of sharks has broken through some kind of cognitive barrier. Several surfers and swimmers have been bitten nearby, ushering in a wave of local and semi-national shark stories. New York Gov. Kathy Hochul announced that state agencies would be stepping up shark patrols by helicopter, boat, and drone, particularly along the south shore of Long Island, where all of the incidents occurred. Beaches in Rockaway, where I now live and work, were closed for swimming twice in July because of shark sightings from shore. (Surfers, who use un-lifeguarded beaches at their own risk, happily stayed in the water.)

According to fishermen, marine biologists, ocean lifeguards, and just about anyone else in a position to know anything about the matter, there are more sharks around than at any time in at least the past half-century. This is a big win, from a conservation perspective. Measures as broad as the Clean Water Act and the Marine Mammal Protection Act, both from 1972, and as specific as a 2019 state law banning commercial purse-seine boats from fishing for bunker in New York state waters, deserve enormous credit for restoring whale, dolphin, and shark populations along the coast of New York and nearby states. After the enormous pressures on them over the course of several centuries, sharks—even endangered ones—are finally recovering. ..............(more)

https://slate.com/technology/2022/09/shark-attacks-new-york-east-coast-reasons-science-risk.html

[Justice matters.]

1. And climate-change warming waters will bring them up the coasts

further.

[TreasonousBastard]

2. Seen more, shark warnings this summer than ever before...

Now, if we could train sharks to eat jellyfish, severything would be back to normal, almost.

[Hermit-The-Prog]

3. Next summer, when people are used to sharks, there will be sharks with lasers on their heads!