When the shark research teams are out on the water, expect your phone to start buzzing with alerts.
That was yet again the case on Tuesday, as a great white shark was spotted 20 yards off the Cape Cod shoreline and a shark was seen 60 yards offshore.
Meanwhile, hammerhead sharks were recently spotted off the Cape — which is becoming a regular summer occurrence here as water temps jump.
“It’s been getting more common,” shark biologist John Chisholm told the Herald. “We used to see them out in the Gulf Stream, but now they’re getting closer to shore with the water temperatures warming into the 70s.”
While white sharks hunt for seals along the Cape, hammerhead sharks eat fish and stingrays — and there’s plenty of that prey around the region.
If a hammerhead shark is spotted close to shore, researchers won’t issue a shark alert like with great white sharks.
“They don’t really pose a threat to people,” Chisholm said. “They’re a fish-eating species, and they’re not going after seals. Their teeth are more for eating fish than for feeding on big marine mammals.”
The shark alerts for great white sharks on Tuesday were off Orleans and Chatham. An apex predator was spotted 20 yards off of Orleans’ Nauset South OSV near Trail 2.
Also, a white shark was reportedly seen 60 yards off Chatham’s North Beach Island. Shark alerts are issued when a white shark sighting is confirmed close to a public beach.
When research teams are out on the water looking for sharks, it tends to be a busy day.
“If there are no alerts the next day, it doesn’t mean the sharks are not there,” Chisholm said. “It just means the team is not on the water… People have to be aware.”
It has been an incredibly busy year for basking sharks across the region, as boaters mistakenly think they’re seeing a white shark. Now, many spotters are also confusing sunfish for white sharks.
“This year basking sharks are everywhere. I’m getting multiple reports every day,” Chisholm said. “Then last week were the first sunfish misidentifications. A lot of people are seeing ‘white sharks’ that are not actually white sharks.”
The fin of the ocean sunfish, also known as a Mola mola, is often confused for a shark’s fin. Ocean sunfish have a more rounded fin, while white sharks have a more triangular fin.
Also, a major sign for a sunfish is if the fin appears then disappears, only to go up and down over and over again.
