The more we learn about sharks, the more we realize they are an integral part of the marine ecosystem.” I’m a person who believes that the more people know about these animals, the more they will revere them, as opposed to fear them. “But the public attitude has dramatically changed over the last 20 years. “For hundreds of years, we viewed these animals as pests that need to be eradicated,” he says. Skomal points out that less is known about the behavior of white sharks in the North Atlantic than is known about sharks elsewhere, and there are many questions yet to be answered. Greg is in a great situation to be able to do that.” “There is also a general safety concern, because it’s the Cape, so it’s important to know about the animals’ behavior. “Are the sharks coming back? Were they here in these numbers before? It’s an ecosystem balance,” she says. He hopes his research will contribute to both domestic and international efforts to achieve sustainable shark populations.Ĭolleague Lisa Natanson, a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration fisheries biologist and a coauthor of Skomal’s paper on age and sexual maturity, says his work is crucial to New England’s ecology. If scientists can learn where sharks feed and breed, Skomal says, efforts can be made to clear those areas of hazards, like fishing nets. The white shark is marked as “vulnerable” by the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Red List of Threatened Species. Each year, researchers estimate, at least 100 million sharks are killed worldwide, some for sport, some to eat (shark fin soup is a delicacy in some parts of the world), and sometimes accidentally in fishermen’s bycatch. The researchers hope that their findings will help protect the ancient predators, whose ancestors plied the seas more than 400 million years ago, from today’s high-tech shark hunters. Working with the Massachusetts Marine Fisheries, he is midway through two major multiyear studies of the population, migration, and behavior of white sharks along Massachusetts beaches and the East Coast of the United States. Skomal, who has contributed to more than 60 scientific papers, is on the adjunct faculty at the University of Massachusetts and is an adjunct scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. This season, he is testing a tethered balloon system with cameras trained on areas like that off Monomoy Island to keep an eye out for sharks when scientists can’t be out there. In 2015, he published a study in Marine and Freshwater Research showing that white sharks grow more slowly and mature sexually much later than scientists had previously thought. In 2013, he used an autonomous underwater vehicle to observe white shark predatory behavior well below the surface, the first time scientists had been able to do so. He is a senior fisheries biologist at the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries, and his Kennedy-like looks and easy manner have helped him earn appearances on the Discovery Channel’s Shark Week specials. Skomal, who has studied sharks of all kinds for three decades, is the North Atlantic’s go-to guy for separating fact from fiction about white sharks. “The data we collect will ultimately conserve the species, and I like that.” Photo by Wayne Davis “To learn about these animals, and how they live, is really quite rewarding,” says Greg Skomal. They come to feast on a burgeoning population of seals, and they are arriving in such numbers that some scientists are now calling the area the sixth white shark hub in the world, joining places like Mexico’s Guadalupe Island and South Africa’s Seal Island, and making it the only aggregation site-an area where sharks reliably gather-in the North Atlantic. In recent years, Cape Cod has become the summer home to a growing population of white sharks-80 were identified in 2014, 141 in 2015, and 147 in 2016.
Some days, especially later in the season, the researcher tracks as many as 23. The predator was one of three white sharks-the name preferred by scientists-tracked that June morning, a slow day by Skomal’s standards.
“That sucker had girth!” Skomal (GRS’06) calls to the boat’s crew, who hurry to note the animal’s size and location. Their dance lasts all of 30 seconds before the shark slides deeper into the Atlantic.
He lowers the camera into the water, filming the shark’s movements, if only briefly. Despite the four-foot swells, the captain holds the boat steadyĪs Skomal maneuvers a 14-foot rod with a GoPro on one end, handling it like a tightrope walker using a pole for balance.
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