The region’s top expert on great white sharks takes a deep dive into the apex predators returning to Cape Cod and New England beaches — and his career tracking them — in a new book released on Tuesday.
“Chasing Shadows” by shark researcher Greg Skomal, written with science author Ret Talbot, is the story of Skomal’s life tracking and tagging white sharks. The book explores the species’ resurgence along the Cape and the fascinating conservation success story.
After great whites disappeared from the Cape decades ago because of the decimated seal population, the federal government put in protections that led to an explosion of seals. As a result, the sharks started to return to hunt seals.
Skomal told the Herald that his first “wake-up call” to the fact that great white sharks were coming back to New England and spending time close to shore was in 2004 when a female shark named “Gretel” was trapped in a lagoon across from Martha’s Vineyard. Skomal and his team tagged Gretel, the first white shark tagged in the region.
Then five years later in 2009, Skomal and his team tagged a whopping five white sharks in a single weekend.
“They then started appearing in greater numbers on the Outer Cape, and our tagging really took off,” said Skomal, a marine biologist with the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries. “And it’s been an upward trajectory since then.”
After the 2009 tagging expedition, the question remained whether those shark sightings would be an anomaly or if it would become the new normal for the Cape. Fifteen years later, Skomal has tagged more than 300 sharks and local researchers have identified more than 600 sharks.
“This is just a remarkable conservation success story,” Talbot told the Herald. “Restoring an apex predator to an ecosystem does not happen very often.
“It’s just incredible,” he said. “Yes, there are very real challenges that need to be addressed with an animal that large in shallow water right off the beaches, but they should be far more celebrated than feared.”
The summer of 2012 marked the first reported shark bite of a human along the Cape in almost a century. Then in 2018, a person was killed by a shark — the state’s first shark bite fatality in 82 years.
Now, Cape beachgoers are greeted with signs warning them about sharks close to shore, advising residents and tourists to be “Shark Smart.” Shark alerts are now common during the summer and fall, as lifeguards get swimmers and surfers out of the water when a shark is detected nearby.
It’s a much different Cape than when Skomal was starting his marine biology career. As a kid, he dreamed of being a shark biologist, but the New England white shark population was lacking when he became a scientist.
Instead of moving out to California to study white sharks there, Skomal stayed and studied other local shark species, including basking and blue sharks. Then fast forward to 2009, and the stars aligned for Skomal with the return of white sharks to the region.
“I hope to inspire and educate through this,” Skomal said of the new book.
Talbot added, “It’s such a great story for any kid to follow their dreams.”
“Chasing Shadows” can be purchased on the Harper Collins Publishers website, as well as on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Target, Walmart, Bookshop, and at other retailers.
