A few days before the start of Shark Week, the region’s top great white shark expert has successfully tagged the first sharks of the season.
Greg Skomal, an accomplished marine biologist with the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries, was out tagging apex predators along Cape Cod on Thursday.
The first shark that Skomal tagged was swimming about a mile north of a popular Truro beach on the Outer Cape.
“Let the shark tagging commence!” the Atlantic White Shark Conservancy tweeted on Friday. “Yesterday, @GregSkomal of the @MassDMF working with the AWSC, tagged 2 sharks!
“This video shows the first shark tagged of the day (and season)!” the Atlantic White Shark Conservancy added. “It was a 10 foot white shark that was tagged about a mile north of Head of the Meadow beach.”
Meanwhile on Thursday, a shark alert went out for a great white spotted near High Head Beach in North Truro.
This is the time of year when great white sharks prowl along the Cape, as they hunt for seals close to shore.
Local shark researchers over the last decade-plus have tagged more than 300 great whites. The scientists estimate that 800 to 900 individual sharks have visited the Cape’s waters in a recent 5-year period — making the Cape one of the largest and potentially densest area for great whites in the world.
Discovery’s Shark Week kicks off on Sunday with nearly 20 new hours of programs that feature the apex predators, including “Belly of the Beast: Feeding Frenzy,” which will provide a first time, close-up look at a great white shark feast — captured by researchers with cameras inside a whale carcass decoy.
Shark Week will also include “Cocaine Sharks,” which reveals what happens to sharks that possibly feed on cocaine and other illegal drugs dumped in South Florida waters.
“For decades rumors of cocaine-fueled sharks have been whispered throughout the fishing community,” the show’s description reads. “Shark expert Tom Hird travels to the Florida Keys to investigate what happens with the sharks coming in contact with the most notorious drug on the planet.”
In “Jaws vs The Meg,” the show explores how great white sharks may have caused the megalodon’s extinction.
And in “Monsters of the Bermuda Triangle,” a porbeagle shark tagged off New England vanishes in the Bermuda Triangle.
“Evidence suggests it could be a monstrous predator,” the show’s description reads. “Dr. James Sulikowski and a team of scientists dive into treacherous depths to uncover the truth behind an apex predator.”