Sharks, unlike marine mammals, rely on the surrounding water to help with their body temperature. Fish, which is what a shark is, is coined as "cold-blooded" because they have no method to regulate their body temperature.
So, sharks are more often affiliated with warmer waters as along the Florida coast. These sightings this year along the Massachusetts shoreline is more or less migration to warmer waters. The ocean is warming at higher latitudes. We saw with the corals an entire latitude wiped out, this is no different. As the waters along the Equator become warmer, the fish will seek more friendly water temperatures in higher latitudes.
August 20, 2019
By Joey Garrison
Orleans, Massachusetts - It's 11:30 a.m. (click here) on a sticky August morning at Nauset Beach here in this Cape Cod town, when another call comes in on the walkie-talkie of Sarah Newcomb- Baker, the beach's head lifeguard.
So, sharks are more often affiliated with warmer waters as along the Florida coast. These sightings this year along the Massachusetts shoreline is more or less migration to warmer waters. The ocean is warming at higher latitudes. We saw with the corals an entire latitude wiped out, this is no different. As the waters along the Equator become warmer, the fish will seek more friendly water temperatures in higher latitudes.
August 20, 2019
By Joey Garrison
Orleans, Massachusetts - It's 11:30 a.m. (click here) on a sticky August morning at Nauset Beach here in this Cape Cod town, when another call comes in on the walkie-talkie of Sarah Newcomb- Baker, the beach's head lifeguard.
The voice is one of her employees flagging a scene similar to the one spotted just two hours before: a great white shark attacking a seal off the shore.
Another lifeguard buzzes in saying she saw a large splash in the area earlier: "I'm wondering if that's the same thing."
Minutes later, Nauset Beach announced its second shark evacuation just that morning, forcing beach-goers to get out of the water for the next hour. The previous closure happened at 9:45 a.m. after a lifeguard spotted a shark devouring a seal about 100 feet off the coast on a different wing of the beach.
Shark-sightings have been a regular occurrence this summer on the sandy beaches that dot Cape Cod, a popular vacation hub of New England. Brochures distributed on beaches urge visitors to "Be shark smart." Signs warn, "Know your risk when entering the water." Following the back-to-back sightings this day, Nauset Beach has purple shark flags erected throughout. It means that sharks are in the area.
Sharks have long been tied to the folklore of Cape Cod thanks to the Steven Spielberg movie classic "Jaws," filmed at Martha's Vineyard in 1975. But spotting a shark had for decades been rare until recently....
Below is a video from August 2018 along Massachusetts coast.
Shark-sightings have been a regular occurrence this summer on the sandy beaches that dot Cape Cod, a popular vacation hub of New England. Brochures distributed on beaches urge visitors to "Be shark smart." Signs warn, "Know your risk when entering the water." Following the back-to-back sightings this day, Nauset Beach has purple shark flags erected throughout. It means that sharks are in the area.
Sharks have long been tied to the folklore of Cape Cod thanks to the Steven Spielberg movie classic "Jaws," filmed at Martha's Vineyard in 1975. But spotting a shark had for decades been rare until recently....
Below is a video from August 2018 along Massachusetts coast.
