More than a dozen giant, dangerous sharks are currently swimming around the northeast coast – and they are expected to stay until the fall.
Shark taggers report a massive 528-pound female white shark off the coast of Cape Cod, while more than 14 sharks are lurking in waters around Long Island.
With an uptick in sightings, officials fear there will also be an increase of attacks – and one just happened over the weekend.
A lifeguard was bit Sunday morning at Smith Point Beach and was taken to the hospital to be treated for his injuries.
There around 14 sharks swimming around Long Islands as of Monday afternoon, with the largest being a 125-pound, juvenile shortfin mako shark named ‘Princess.’
Farther up north, in Cape Cod, another shark was spotted just 150 feet from the Race Point Beach by a helicopter flying above.
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More than a dozen giant, dangerous sharks are currently swimming around the northeast coast – and they are expected to stay until the fall
Toward the end of spring, sharks leave their winter homes in the south for warm waters in the north, sparking a large migration that settles along east coast beaches that are also heavily populated by visitors until the end of September.
Scientists warned visitors of Cape Cod to be weary when swimming in the bay, as this region could see a migration of at least 100 sharks this summer.
Since 2009, researchers have tagged more than 280 great whites off the cape, with nearly 230 of those tags still active and sending back data about shark movements, according to the scientists.
By tagging the predators allows the team to better understand where the sharks are likely to make an appearance, as well as what times of the day they tend to be most active.
Princess, the 528-pound shark, seems to be the largest lurking around Cape Cod. Tagged by OCEARCH, this juvenile female is more than 10 feet long and was first spotted last year
Another shark was spotted just 150 feet from the Race Point Beach in Massachusetts by a helicopter flying above
Princess, the 528-pound shark, seems to be the largest lurking around Cape Cod.
Tagged by OCEARCH, this juvenile female is more than 10 feet long and was first spotted last year.
There are at least six sharks tagged by OCEARCH that are swimming around the New England peninsula.
OCEARCH is a data-centric organization built to help scientists collect ocean data.
Greg Skomal, a state marine biologist who has been studying the region’s great whites for decades, said the animals still tend to be concentrated on the Atlantic Ocean-facing side of the cape, where they feast on a flourishing seal population.
He advised beachgoers to be most vigilant when swimming off beaches where the shoreline quickly drops off into deeper waters.
Traveling a little further south is another large concentration of sharks – located around Long Island, New York.
However, these animals are much smaller that those found in Massachusetts waters.
More than 20 species of sharks can be found in waters off Long Island, with the brown shark as the most common.
It is not clear what shark bite a lifeguard over the weekend, but what is sure is that the animal was swimming very close to the shoreline.
Pictured is the largest shark, named Flowers, that is swimming around Long Island
A lifeguard was bit Sunday morning at Smith Point Beach and was taken to the hospital to be treated for his injuries
Zachari Gallo was playing the role of a victim during a training exercise when a five-foot shark bit him in the chest and hand at 10.15am on Smith Point Beach, New York.
The beach was closed after the attack, but reopened again at 10am on July 4.
He received stitches in his chest and Suffolk County officials closed the Long Island beach to swimming Sunday after the unprecedented shark attack.
The lifeguard said once he felt the texture of his attacker he knew it was shark.
‘I felt sharp, sharp pain and once I felt the rubbery texture, I knew it was some kind of shark,’ Gallo told CBS.
He said: ‘I hit the shark three times. I went boom, boom, boom. I guess in the third one it spun back and it’s tail hit me in the chest.’
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