Cape Cod’s Great White Shark Comeback

If you’ve spent enough time around boats, you learn a simple rule: respect the water.

Capt. Ross Walkinshaw has another rule for fishing the waters off Cape Cod: respect what’s swimming underneath it.

Walkinshaw, owner of Cape Cod Charter Guys, has seen plenty of great white sharks up close. His description of one is memorable: a mouth like a wood chipper attached to a body about as wide as a Honda Civic and as long as a Ford F-150.

That may sound like a fisherman’s tall tale. It isn’t.

“Sharks are extreme,” Walkinshaw says. “Can you imagine being in eight feet of water and not seeing it until it’s actually right there?”

That is the reality facing fishermen and boaters around Cape Cod during the summer months. Great white sharks have returned to these waters in numbers that would have seemed unimaginable a generation ago.

And when you’re sitting in a fishing boat with one of these animals coming up from below, television documentaries suddenly seem a lot less entertaining.

When the Shark Comes to the Boat

Great whites aren't particularly interested in fishermen. They’re interested in food.

The problem is that a hooked striped bass can look an awful lot like an easy meal.

Walkinshaw experienced that firsthand when a great white came alongside one of his boats, close enough for a customer to get an unobstructed look at its teeth.

“When it’s less than a foot away from you inside of a boat, that’s not as cute and fuzzy as it is on TV,” he says.

Walkinshaw decided discretion was the better part of valor and moved the boat roughly five miles.

It didn't help.

He soon hooked a striped bass. As the fish came behind the boat, another great white appeared in less than 10 feet of water. The shark attacked the bass with enough force to bend Walkinshaw’s fishing rod nearly to the deck and almost pull him across the stern.

So he moved again.

This time the boat traveled another several miles. Then an approximately 18-foot great white launched itself completely out of the water.

That was enough.

The customers had seen what they came to see. Now they wanted to go home.

Walkinshaw agreed.

Cape Cod’s Great White Comeback

For fishermen who work Cape Cod year-round, encounters like these are becoming part of the summer routine.

Great whites begin arriving in the region in the spring, their numbers increase through the summer, and they eventually head south as the water cools.

By some estimates, hundreds of white sharks can be found around Cape Cod during the height of the season.

That is a remarkable change from much of the 20th century, when sightings were unusual.

The comeback is largely a conservation success story.

Shark populations around the world suffered enormous declines during the last century. Great whites faced additional pressure as their prey became less abundant. But changes in marine-mammal protections helped seal populations recover, particularly around Cape Cod.

Where there are seals, there will eventually be predators.

And the great white is about as serious a predator as the Atlantic Ocean has to offer.

Protections for white sharks beginning in the 1990s also helped the species recover. Today, Cape Cod has become one of the best-known seasonal gathering places for great whites in the world.

Researchers have tagged hundreds of individual sharks in the region, and hundreds more have been detected by monitoring programs.

For conservationists, that's good news.

For somebody standing waist-deep in Cape Cod Bay, it calls for a little common sense.

A Predator Doing What Predators Do

Capt. Doug Brown, owner of Jenniferann Sportfishing Charters, doesn't view the sharks as villains.

“They’re a really cool creature,” Brown says. “They’re just living in their environment. And we’re in theirs.”

That's an important distinction.

A great white isn't cruising Cape Cod looking for trouble. It's looking for food. The ocean is its home, and humans are visitors.

Brown has spent roughly 25 years running charter boats in the area. He's watched great whites swim beside his boat, grab lures and occasionally launch themselves completely out of the water.

He's even heard of a shark attempting to take a bite at an American flag hanging from a boat's outrigger.

But Brown says anglers shouldn't confuse spectacular behavior with an appetite for people.

The risk to swimmers and surfers is real, particularly in areas where seals and sharks are concentrated.

Shark attacks remain extremely rare, however.

Brown still believes warnings are worth taking seriously.

He recalls seeing a family with several children swimming in Cape Cod Bay. Brown warned the parents that white sharks were in the area.

The father acknowledged the warning and said the family wouldn't stay long.

Brown's response was essentially the only sensible one: sometimes you make the warning, and then you let people make their own decisions.

Fishermen Are Usually Watching the Fish

For charter fishermen, great whites are often more nuisance than threat.

Capt. Tom Szado of The Perfect Catch Fishing has been guiding clients since 1978. His customers generally find the sharks fascinating.

Occasionally a fish comes back to the boat missing a substantial portion of itself.

Business, however, continues.

As long as the boat is floating and the fish are biting, most customers aren't particularly interested in complaining about the occasional shark.

In fact, some customers want to see one.

Brown once had a client who thought it would be a good idea to put fish slime on her hands and put them in the water to attract a shark.

Brown stopped that experiment immediately.

Great whites may be fascinating animals, but there is no reason to turn yourself into bait just to get a better photograph.

That's a pretty good rule for anybody who spends time on the water.

Are the Sharks Changing the Fishery?

This is where opinions among fishermen become more complicated.

The return of great whites has coincided with a dramatic increase in the seal population, and many local fishermen believe seals have had a greater effect on the fishery than sharks themselves.

An 800-pound seal requires a lot of food.

Young great whites eat a variety of prey, including bottom fish, smaller sharks and rays, schooling fish and squid. As they grow larger, their diets increasingly include marine mammals.

That puts mature great whites directly into the same ecosystem as the seals that have become so numerous around Cape Cod.

Brown doesn't believe the sharks have fundamentally changed the fishery. He has noticed, however, that fish don't always seem to settle into an area the way they once did.

And there may be another wrinkle.

Fishing boats themselves can become associated with food.

Brown says great whites sometimes appear to key in on the sound of diesel engines because boats often mean injured or hooked fish.

In other words, your boat may be functioning as a floating dinner bell.

The Accidental Catch

Nobody is supposed to target great whites.

Anglers can, however, encounter one accidentally.

Brown once had a great white take his bait. The shark came partially out of the water, with its tail visible as it worked against the line.

Eventually, the shark broke free.

That's the preferred outcome.

Sometimes sharks take lures without breaking the terminal tackle. Other times they simply bite through the fish being reeled toward the boat.

Brown compares the damage to the work of a slightly curved meat cleaver.

That's not something most fishermen want to find at the end of their line.

When the Sharks Get Thick, Move

Experienced fishermen know that stubbornness isn't the same thing as toughness.

Walkinshaw follows that philosophy when great whites become too numerous around his usual fishing grounds.

In one season, more than a dozen sharks gathered around his boat.

Rather than fight the situation, he moved.

His charter operation shifted toward the south side of Cape Cod and Martha's Vineyard, where the sharks weren't yet as concentrated.

That's not running scared.

That's knowing your surroundings and making a smart decision.

There are plenty of fish in the sea, and there's no trophy worth putting a customer—or a boat—unnecessarily at risk.

Farther south, around Long Island, other shark species are more common, but they generally don't interfere with charter operations to the same degree.

Cape Cod is different.

The great whites have found an extraordinarily productive seasonal feeding ground, and they're likely to keep coming back.

The New Reality of Cape Cod Fishing

By the Fourth of July weekend, Brown was already hearing reports over the VHF radio.

Two boats had spotted great whites that morning.

Another had brought a fish toward the boat only to discover that something had already taken a bite.

The sharks were hungry.

That isn't necessarily a disaster.

It's nature doing what nature does.

The great white's return to Cape Cod is, in many ways, evidence that decades of conservation efforts worked. But successful conservation doesn't mean humans get to ignore the consequences.

If you're swimming, pay attention to warnings.

If you're surfing, know where the sharks and seals are concentrated.

If you're fishing, understand that a hooked fish can attract a predator capable of destroying it in seconds.

And if you're running a charter boat and an 18-foot great white breaches alongside you, remember that there's no prize for being the last guy to leave.

The ocean hasn't changed its rules.

It has simply reminded us that we're sharing it with animals that have been doing this a lot longer than we have.

Respect the water. Respect the wildlife. And when common sense says it's time to move the boat, move the boat.