An alarming increase in sharks in waters off the east coast has swimmers and fishermen on edge.
Bordered by New York City, Long Island, Westchester County and Connecticut, Long Island Sound is home to five species of sharks: the spiny shark, smooth shark, dusky shark, brown shark and sand tiger shark.
But larger sharks sometimes manage to reach relatively calm waters, and have been doing so at an increasing rate.
In 2022, at least six people were bitten or injured by sharks on New York beaches, and in 2019, a great white shark was reported off the coast of Greenwich, Connecticut.
“They can be relatively close to shore, depending on where they feed and what they eat at certain times of the year,” says fisheries biologist Jon Vander Werff. he told the Hartford Courant.
In recent years, Long Island Sound has seen an increasing number of sharks
“I don’t want to say they’re inshore like they are on the beaches, but if someone was fishing and caught a fish, those bigger (sharks) are usually the ones that would go after the fish,” he said. “They’re not inshore, but they can get pretty close to shore.”
He noted that conditions in the strait are becoming ideal for these sharks.
“The water quality is there for them and the ecosystem has been recovering from years past when there weren’t many sharks,” he said. he told the Hartford Courant.
“Some people may not see this as a good thing, but as a fisheries biologist, I see this as a great thing because the ecosystem is recovering and there are now enough resources for sharks to survive in Long Island Sound.”
“They are apex predators, so they are at the top of the food chain,” he added. “They need a lot of resources to survive.”
There is now abundant prey for sharks to eat in the strait as a result of conservation efforts to clean up the rivers that flow into the ocean.
In 2022, at least six people were bitten or injured by sharks on New York beaches
“Seeing sharks in our local ecosystem is extremely important and is a sign that the environment around us is healthy,” said Chris Paparo, a shark expert at Stony Brook University on Long Island. series from Twitter videos.
David Molnar of the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection also attributed the increase in shark sightings to more babies being born as sandbar sharks become more common.
“Part of it is their biology,” he said. “It takes them one to three years to have babies, and when they do, they only have a couple of babies.”
“We only see them in the summer. Now they are here and they are appearing.”
“We’ve had young pups caught there by accident by fishermen, and they tend to follow the bait wherever it is,” he said.
“There are a lot of bunkers in Milford, New Haven right now. I’m sure there are sharks feeding on them.”
Molnar added that smooth dogfish are also present in Long Island Sound, but will move out when the waters cool in the fall and winter.
But professors Oliver Shipley and Michael Frisk of Stony Brook’s School of Marine and Atmospheric Science told DailyMail.com they can’t say conclusively that there’s a specific reason why sharks are swimming so close to shore.
“This is not a clear cause-and-effect scenario,” Shipley said.
“This is extremely complex and we have to be very careful about attributing single factors, such as pollution, to the reason why we may see more of certain animals in certain areas than before.”
Experts recommend avoiding uneven waters where sharks can carry out ‘sneak attacks’
Still, experts say the odds of being bitten remain low: experienced diver John Langlois, owner of Enfield Scuba and Water Sports, estimates them at 264 million to one.
“When you look at how many there are, they get a bad rap because as soon as someone gets bitten, it seems like hundreds of people get bitten, but that’s not the case,” he told the Courant.
“And there are so few bites that what makes them so bad, of course, is the publicity.”
But if provoked, “for example, if you’re swimming and you kick them, they might come up and give you an exploratory bite,” Vander Werff warned.
To avoid bites, Langlois recommends avoiding areas that drop between 20 and 30 feet “because that would be a sneak attack, where the sharks would be down below, see something moving and come straight at you.”
“Obviously, avoid the water if you’re bleeding,” he added. “There’s a higher risk of shark attack. Sharks can detect small blood molecules at great distances. Especially in brackish water or poor visibility, a shiny object can look like a baitfish.
‘So you want to leave your shiny jewelry on the beach blanket.
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