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Cape Cod is New England's summer playground.
But just off the beach, great white sharks are arriving in increasing numbers,
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hunting in ways never seen before.
Off the coast of Cape Cod, a suspected shark attack...
A swimmer, bitten on the leg, rushed to the hospital...
- With new science... - Yeah!
and startling discoveries...
it's incredible how fast these animals move.
scientists hope to predict shark behavior...
I've tagged white sharks literally 20 feet from the shoreline.
...to keep people safe.
In the northeast corner of the United States,
Cape Cod stretches off the coast of Massachusetts, dotted with beach towns.
And summer is peak time for tourists... and sharks.
It's when great white sharks migrate here to hunt an increasing number of seals.
Right next to towns and beaches.
With five attacks in 10 years, one of them fatal,
it's important to know when it's safe to go in the water.
You got the white sharks, they're coming back in big numbers.
You have the seal populations, they've been restored.
But we've got a problem. We've got human activities overlapping with them.
As a parent,
I have a hard time watching my daughter go in over her waist in the water,
because there's a very real chance
that there's white sharks exactly where she's swimming.
To reduce the chance of attacks...
scientists Greg Skomal and Megan Winton,
working with the Atlantic white shark conservancy,
want to make shark activity more predictable.
Yup.
We want to be in a better position to advise public safety officials,
beach-goers, general public, on where these animals are most likely to be,
and when and where they might be hunting seals.
To determine the chances of where a shark might be and when,
they're tagging, tracking, and filming white sharks all around the cape.
One of the big questions we've been working to answer since 2014 here
is trying to figure out how many white sharks are coming here every year.
If they can estimate a total number of great whites in Cape Cod,
it will be a first for science.
Every time we go out, we're still seeing new sharks.
Greg and Megan also want to learn
how sharks use this unique underwater terrain to hunt seals,
including the final moments before an attack.
But first, they have to find one.
-Over here at two o'clock, John. - Ok, we got that one Wayne.
Spotter pilots are able to find them relatively easily.
Ok, one o'clock now.
The bottom is beautiful white sand,
and it contrasts really well with the dark grey tops of the animals.
Right under me now
Wayne directs the research vessel to that shark.
A couple hundred yards.
We really just kind of sneak up on it.
Right there!
And then we get underwater video footage of it with a GoPro.
Look at this fish, look at that! Trying to size us up!
If it's sticking around in water that's the right depth, he'll tag it.
Come on, love!
That's nice. Damn, that was perfect.
Every time we're doing that, we're collecting all sorts of information,
where we saw it, what the water temperature is,
what the depth of the water is, how big that animal is.
And we'll do that repeatedly over the course of the day.
They're filming sharks of all shapes, sizes, and personalities.
Oh, it came right for the camera!
He's definitely fired up. These little ones tend to be feisty.
Oh, now he's coming back to the boat, lets see what he does!
It's got a ton of seal scratches, it's been trying!
Younger, smaller sharks like this one can be inexperienced hunters.
Maybe they're not as good at it, they're honing their skills.
Seals are big animals. They're really capable predators in their own right.
And they have big claws and big teeth.
So if the sharks don't successfully dispatch them with one strike,
the seal will fight back.
We call it seal rash. They'll have seal scratches all up and down their face.
And so some of these individuals,
particularly some of the smaller individuals
that probably haven't figured out how to best take down a seal here,
we'll see really extensive patterns of seal scratches.
Each tag will help them catalog and track the sharks.
Got him! That's not a bad tag! Look at that!
- It's right behind! [laughs] Wow! - Whoa! Whoa!
- Oh, jeez! - It rammed us!
He's not into us.
You know what, I was getting boat-rammer vibes from that one!
I figured that he was just going to take off offshore,
because he started accelerating,
and then he came right around and smacked the, bumped the boat!
We knew when we saw that shark it was fired up, you know.
I think it's in a heightened state of feeding, you know,
and those are the ones I worry about
in terms of, you know, a surfer, a diver, a swimmer paddling out here.
Unbelievable.
Their research suggests that the population is on the rise,
but just how many sharks are there?
Since 2014, we conducted a really intensive population study,
where we went out twice a week, got underwater video footage,
and basically created a catalog of the white sharks of Cape Cod.
And what we're doing now using that information to extrapolate,
to come up with a population number.
They've cataloged hundreds,
but they believe the total number could be hundreds more.
25 years ago, if you said to me,
there would be lots of white sharks around, eating seals,
and you'd be tagging them, I'd say, "you're crazy."
But we've tagged now over 250 white sharks in the last decade,
and I never could have imagined that,
but, it is indeed, you know, a natural ecosystem coming back.
The reason? Seals.
Before the 1970s, fishermen saw seals as competition, and killed them on sight.
Their population was decimated.
And without a stable source of food, the sharks left.
For generations, there were fewer seals, and great whites were extremely scarce.
But in 1972, the seals were declared a protected species
under the Marine Mammal Protection Act.
It's now estimated that there are up to 50 thousand seals in the Cape Cod region.
Their numbers have bounced back. And so have the sharks.
You've got this incredible natural ecosystem
where you've got the predator, the white shark, and the prey, the seals.
Then you've got people that visit here, you know,
that overlap with this predator-prey relationship.
And we realized that it was important to start thinking about public safety.
And that's when, the last couple of years,
we started really looking intensively at the predatory behavior of the white shark.
Around the world, great whites are ambush hunters.
Rocketing from deep water with such force, that they're airborne.
But not on Cape Cod.
Here the beaches are fringed with shallow sand bars.
Without the advantage of depth, it's harder for the sharks to ambush the seals.
So they have to hunt smarter.
Greg and Megan's mission is to find out how.
The white shark's predatory strategy is all about stealth.
How tight the seals stick to the beach,
they know if they stay shallow enough the sharks can't get in.
And so what we see are sharks
really challenging themselves in really shallow water.
If you watch them here off the shoreline,
they're just kind of cruising the coastline,
essentially waiting for a seal to come out and make a mistake.
On the beach, there's no threat. But seals eat fish.
So, they must leave the safety of the shore.
For the sharks, every seal that enters the water is a chance at a high-calorie meal.
To survive, great whites must eat the equivalent of 40 pounds of blubber a week.
And they'll risk everything to get it.
In these shallow waters, a female shark has killed a seal,
but that's only half the battle.
Waves push the carcass into the surf zone and out of reach.
But the female shark stays close.
She pushes to her limits to reach the seal in just inches of water.
If she can't reach it, she'll waste valuable energy.
She's in shallow water.
You can see water pushing up around her dorsal fin as she gets in there.
But it's just out of reach.
A slick of blood from the seal has attracted more sharks to the area.
It's now or never for this large female.
A meal so rich in fat and protein makes the effort, and the risk, worth the prize.
A seal is a great meal for a white shark.
It's not the only thing they eat.
But a seal is equivalent to eating like hundreds or thousands of fish,
in terms of energy content.
But catching a seal isn't easy.
Eight times out of 10, the sharks' attempt will fail.
Successful or not,
predatory sharks returning to what's become a tourist mecca could be dangerous.
Greg and Megan want to better understand what the sharks do.
We want to know their behavior and how they go about making the decision
of where and when to attack and kill a seal.
But seeing the moment of attack is extremely uncommon,
and filming it is even more rare.
So they've helped develop new camera technology never used before on Cape Cod.
For the first time,
these CAT tags are recording unique great white behavior here,
from inside the action.
It's got a camera system built into it.
So it can record everything that that shark is doing.
Basically the viewer will be able to ride the back of the shark for a couple of days
and see the behavior of that animal.
It will exhibit different behaviors and we will be recording those behaviors,
not every hour, not every minute, but every second.
Over here, two o'clock, John. Quite deep.
The CAT tag's got the device that everybody's got in their smartphone
that lets you track your activity. It's got a three-dimensional accelerometer
that archives, 20 times a second, the movements and the behavior of that animal.
- Oh! The size of it, this is beautiful. - Beautiful fish.
I do not see a tag.
- It's Curvy Sloth! - A 12-foot long great white.
People they might think it's not very scientific to give white sharks nicknames.
But they help us remember who these individuals are,
and we'll go, "Oh, it's Curvy Sloth."
And a lot of people think a shark looks like a shark.
But there's a lot of unique traits and features
and coloration patterns to these individuals
that allow us recognize them from the surface.
- This gets tricky, magnets off? - Yep! Ready to rock.
He's moving off to the left a little, John.
The CAT tag must be deployed perfectly
for the camera to capture Curvy Sloth's movements.
Slow down.
So he likes to come up, we'll just get him on the next sweep.
We see them do this sometimes, we've learned from these tags
is they'll do... almost like these bounce-dive things.
But this one just needs to come up right now and get a tag!
Come on, rise up, let's go.
- Nice, oh, that looks incredible! - Yes, sir!
- Yeah! - Wooo!
Now, it's a waiting game, to see what Curvy Sloth does next.
- Oh, there it is! - Do you see him, John?
He's right there! Wow. That sucker's hunting pretty close.
So the shark that just got one of these tags, Curvy Sloth,
is now right up off of some seals in really tight to the beach.
Doing exactly what we want it to do.
Exactly. So that's what this study is all about,
characterizing this behavior and learning more about how they hunt for seals
in the waters off of our beaches here.
We want to figure out when, where, and how
do white sharks naturally attack and kill their prey, the seals.
If we find patterns in behavior, then we have an ability to predict or forecast
where these animals are likely to be relative to human activities,
and relative to their feeding behavior. And this is the tool that lets us do it.
It will be a couple of days,
waiting for the tag to release from this shark.
If Greg and Megan can home in on the tag's radio signal,
they'll retrieve its valuable data.
And possibly, detailed video footage of an attack.
- Ok, we got that one, Wayne. - Yeah, ok, one o'clock now.
Is it happening at high tide, low tide, daylight, nighttime?
We're using all kinds of tools
to better understand what environmental conditions lead to that natural event.
I'm back, going to starboard now.
The best chance to see a shark is from the air.
From my perspective, the amount of sharks I see
is like infinitely more than the average person. I mean infinitely.
Because the standard image of a white shark
is with the fin going along in the water, like in the movie Jaws,
and it almost doesn't happen. They're all underwater. That's why I do what I do.
The only way you're gonna find a shark is with an airplane.
I've seen several near misses of white sharks trying to eat a seal.
But most of the time the seals are very very aware and agile.
Here, the seal jumps very quickly aside and does a 180 or 270.
It comes around behind the shark getting on his tail where it's safe.
Even with a bird's eye view,
Wayne sees attempted predations just a couple of times a year.
But it's not the only thing he sees.
People on the beach don't know they're there.
Swimming right by bathers, right by surfers.
Dangerous interactions with people are quite rare.
But you really have to pay attention.
Tourism is the backbone of the cape's economy.
In summer, the population here more than doubles,
and so do the number of beach goers.
It's also prime time for the sharks.
In the last decade, Cape Cod has had five shark attacks on humans.
The most recent, in 2018, was fatal.
The victim was rushed to hospital where he was pronounced dead.
But the vast majority of beach-goers, tourists, and locals
have not changed their swimming habits.
Locals worry about the effect on tourism.
But like great white sharks, the number of tourists is also on the rise.
Big sharks so close to the beach is fueling shark tourism.
Seal tourism also draws a crowd.
With more people in the water,
understanding how sharks hunt here has never been more important.
Seascape ecologist Bryan Legare, from the Center for Coastal Studies,
works with Greg and Megan to predict shark behavior.
That's nice.
And what he's discovering is a major clue.
He's tracking great white movements over the seafloor and sand bars,
on a scale never done here before.
Up until this point in time,
we understood how sharks were moving from beach to beach, miles away.
But as a beach goer,
that doesn't really tell me where's the shark in relation to people.
We need a way of measuring these animals in much finer scale,
to see how they're using the bars and the troughs and the waves and the currents.
Bryan's first step was a sonar survey,
showing areas of the cape's seafloor.
In the most detailed maps of the cape's underwater terrain ever made.
Using those maps he found a way to observe the shark's movements
on a moment-by-moment scale.
Here we have thousands of individual locations of about 60 different sharks
that were present one out of every two hours throughout the summer of 2021.
Each red dot indicates where a shark has been.
And what we were able to confirm is that, in these shallow-water areas,
a shark is present a majority of the time.
And shark behavior at one location stands out,
a shark hot-spot that gets more activity than any other,
near one of the cape's largest seal haul-outs: the trough.
A place where currents create two shallow sandbars with a deep gutter in between.
As the sand moves along the outer cape, it forms two parallel bars,
one adjacent to shore and one a little further offshore
with a deep trough in the middle.
As the sharks move through this area, they use the inner bar,
traveling along the bottom towards the seal haul out.
A sneak attack using the trough for depth,
the sandbar for cover, and the murky green water for stealth.
They aren't just doing things at random.
The white sharks are following the sea floor,
adapting to the local environment in a hunt for seals.
It's a unique strategy not seen anywhere else in the world.
They are displaying a different type of behavior
than we've seen in different white shark hot spots across the world.
Critical new information for Megan and Greg.
Cape Cod is probably the most challenging place in the world
for white sharks to successfully feed on seals.
Gotta figure out how to negotiate shallow water,
how to successfully ambush their prey. So they have to be very calculating.
We typically don't think of fish having to learn, but they do.
They have the cognitive abilities to adapt based on experience.
And I'll tell you right now,
anytime a white shark commits to trying to kill something,
it's a massive expenditure of energy.
And if there's not an energetic payoff, a big meal at the end of that,
then it's wasted energy.
If it does that too much, it's not going to survive.
And so even an experienced shark is going to hold back
until it's absolutely sure that it can successfully ambush and kill that seal.
Those that do successfully feed here have figured it out.
They wanna put themselves in the best position to feed.
And so we're trying to figure out how they're doing that.
New technologies like the CAT tag on Curvy Sloth
may hold clues to the critical moments before an attack.
We're really just scratching the surface. We really are.
It's been two days,
and the camera tag on Curvy Sloth pops to the surface.
Megan tracks its radio signal to retrieve it.
Its footage could help solve the puzzle of how great whites hunt on Cape Cod.
These tags have a video component.
It's basically like you're riding on the back of a white shark,
so you can see exactly what that animal is doing.
So this is really cool. You can see just how shallow he is.
You can see the surface of the water and the bottom.
Oh, there it is! He is going after something.
And it's so impressive to see how quickly these animals accelerate.
They're so powerful. This has not been sped up.
This is the closest the scientists have ever come
to witnessing a predation from the shark's perspective.
Will Curvy Sloth eat, or go hungry?
So, if we watch Curvy Sloth in slow motion,
you can actually get a better idea of what it is he's doing.
It's incredible how fast these animals move, but you can see him right there.
He's going to see something and kinda gonna to do a double take almost.
So there! He does a double take.
And you can see just how quickly he's going in.
There's a shadow there that you could just make out. That's actually a seal.
You can see his dorsal fins almost breaking the surface here,
you can see there's a big splash of water
and that right there, that dark gray spot, that's a seal.
You can see how fast it's swimming, it's kicking up a wake,
it knows it's being pursued by a white shark.
But it gets away.
So this wasn't a successful predatory attempt.
But we still are learning a lot from this interaction.
I mean, Curvy Sloth gets so close to the seal at one point,
you kind of almost go like, "how did he miss it?"
But seals are incredible animals in their own right.
They're very agile, once they cue into a shark coming in at them,
a lot of times they're able to escape.
And so one thing that we've learned from these tags
is not only getting a better idea of their predatory behavior,
but realizing how hard they have to work
to successfully feed on a seal in the waters off of Cape Cod.
Some locals believe neither sharks or seals have a place on the cape.
I grew up on Cape Cod. I've been a commercial fisherman for 21 years.
When I was a kid growing up here, seals were a rare thing to be seen.
We now have a problem, they're overpopulated,
and they're decimating the entire fish population
and ruining the ecosystem, the fragile ecosystem that we have here.
Fishing is part of the culture and allure of the Cape,
named for the abundance of cod that once filled its waters.
Declining fish populations due to decades of over-fishing
are making it harder for the fishermen to make a living.
Many are blaming the seals.
At the end of the day
the seals here are a direct effect on my bottom line,
on the livelihood of myself, my family, my business, and it hurts.
Because there's so many seals here now, they've attracted the white sharks,
and they've made it dangerous for people to go in the water.
And now, my daughter, she goes in the ocean,
there's a very real threat she could die.
Many consider the sharks and seals a recent phenomenon.
But the local Mashpee Wampanoag people
have co-existed with seals and sharks for centuries.
These waters have sustained us for thousands of years.
Seals are something that our culture relied upon heavily.
People saying seals are new and sharks are new,
that's inconsistent with the historical written record
and definitely inconsistent with tribal oral histories.
The returning of the seals and the sharks, Mother Nature is a powerful thing,
and to see the wildlife returning,
means that these animals have food supplies,
everything's reliant on each other, that's our belief system,
and that everything has the right to live. So we have to be respectful of that being,
and that they come here during particular seasons,
the same way that we allow tourists to come and overwhelm our streets,
and disturb the locals. We're patient with them.
So we all need to be mindful and patient of all the beings,
like the sharks, the seals, everyone.
Grey seals are the most common seal on Cape Cod.
They can reach 10 feet long and weigh nearly 900 pounds.
On land they're clumsy. But in the water, they defy gravity.
They are curious and playful.
And the waters around the cape are rich in the fish and crustaceans they love to eat.
It's a grey seal paradise, year round.
But every time they enter the water, they're vulnerable.
A close call with a shark has left this seal with gruesome wounds.
And while seals have a remarkable ability to heal,
the next time he enters the water might be his last.
Grey seals must eat up to six percent of their body weight every day to survive.
So there's no time to recover. He must return to the water to feed.
The shark attack that caused the bloating in this seal will likely be fatal.
His inability to dive means he can't eat.
He's a sitting duck, and he hasn't gone unnoticed.
But the shark doesn't attack.
It's really kind of mind blowing.
The way we think about these animals, right, are these big amped up predators.
A lot of people think of them as kind of mindless eating machines.
Instead of mindless killers, could these great whites be picky eaters?
It's very different from what you typically see on TV or in the movies.
So that really blew me away.
It's a question for next years shark season.
As the summer draws to a close...
great whites migrate south, as far as Florida, to escape the cold.
In winter, a stark beauty sweeps over Cape Cod.
Snow falls on empty summer homes.
But for gray seals, this is the most important time of year.
They are here to raise their young.
After 11 months, female gray seals give birth to only one pup.
At birth, the pup is around 35 pounds, but over the next 3 weeks,
drinking its mother's rich milk, it will gain around 3 pounds a day.
During this time, mom's only job is to look after her newborn.
She won't leave her pup, even to eat.
It's a vulnerable time for both mother and pup.
So they settle on this secluded beach on the outer edge of the cape for the winter.
Biologist Dr. Andrea Bogomolni monitors their role in the environment.
There are misconceptions that people have about grey seals,
specifically here in this region.
One is that they're eating all the fish, not just some fish, all the fish.
And they are not.
They eat what's abundant.
The meat and potatoes of their diet are these little forage fish.
And studies show that the nitrogen in seal scat
is fertilizing native beach grass,
helping to stabilize sand dunes and protect the area from storm surges.
Nitrogen from the seal poop that's on the beach.
it's actually contributing to the beach grasses.
So ecosystems could be changing in ways that were completely unexpected
by having these animals return to their environment. It's really exciting.
By spring, mother seals and their young return to the sea to feed.
The sharks are returning, too. And they're hungry.
After their long journey north, they must replenish their fat stores
And a recent kill drifting in shallow water...
...is an opportunity this large male can't afford to pass up.
But in just two feet of water, it's risky.
It's a dangerous scenario. This is a really big shark.
Probably weighs in excess of a thousand pounds.
Big fish don't like super shallow water,
particularly if there's any kind of current or waves
pushing them even shallower.
It can end up on the beach very, very easily.
It's a gamble the shark is taking,
and it's going to get this seal come hell or high water. In this case, low water.
Not a good place for a big fish.
People don't realize that sharks don't have a reverse gear,
and so they have to move forward.
A single wave could push him to the point of no return.
They can't just back up. And so if a shark ends up on the sand,
it's going to have to wiggle and writhe, and twist and turn to get off.
And some cases they don't successfully do that, and they die.
Hunting in the surf, this shark is nearly out of the water.
This has never been filmed before.
Using his muscular tail, the shark fights his way back into the water.
He drags the seal out of the danger zone.
Finally, he can eat.
The commotion hasn't gone unnoticed.
Two more sharks are closing in.
An unusual occurrence. Great whites are thought to be solitary.
The new part for us is seeing multiple sharks on a kill.
Once that dominant shark moves off, then the next size one down moves in,
maybe get a quick bite, before the other shark comes back.
Multiple sharks cooperatively feeding has rarely been documented.
Seeing it on Cape Cod is a first.
Surprising new research suggests they are much more social than ever imagined.
People think of white sharks as kind of solitary,
not necessarily the most intelligent creatures.
They're kind of thought of as swimming noses,
essentially just out there looking for the next meal all the time,
but there are these complex social interactions
that scientists are just starting to understand.
To see those three sharks kind of giving way to each other as they feed,
almost like doing a dance.
I'm honestly completely floored by it.
You know, there's no fighting, they weren't getting into it with each other,
which is really surprising.
We've never seen this kind of behavior before on Cape Cod.
And this large, successful male may even be a shark they know.
I think we're actually gonna be able to identify
the big shark out of the three that were present.
That shark was so tight to the beach and really shallow water,
that we could clearly see some of its markings
as well as the edge of the dorsal fin, which is unique to every individual.
It's kind of like a fingerprint is for a human.
At some points you can actually see markings on the tail,
there was some really clear notching.
Now that I have seen this footage, I am a hundred percent sure
that this is white shark Curvy Sloth, He was first identified in 2014.
- Magnets off? - Yep!
What is even cooler, Curvy Sloth was tagged with a camera tag last summer.
We saw him actively pursue a seal...
which was incredible to see. But he ultimately failed.
But not this year.
Hunting for seals off the coast of Cape Cod isn't easy.
The fact that he comes here year after year is a good indication
that he's figured out how to successfully hunt for seals in this area.
Learning from one year to the next.
He's learned how to navigate this environment,
which is so incredibly exciting.
But Curvy Sloth is just one of many white sharks
returning year after year.
There was never a population estimate
for white sharks in the Northwest Atlantic.
It's one of the most mysterious populations of white sharks on the planet.
So the impetus behind starting this catalog
wasn't just to identify these individuals. The impetus really was to get an idea
of how many white sharks were coming to Cape Cod.
Now, for the first time,
Megan and Greg have a total number of sharks in the area.
And it's far higher than expected.
We were able to estimate that 800 to 900 individuals
visited the waters off of Cape Cod during a five-year period,
which is absolutely incredible.
Nearly 900 great white sharks visit the beaches of Cape Cod,
making it one of the largest
and potentially the densest area for great whites in the world.
Greg, Megan and Bryan's groundbreaking work
reveals these sharks are smarter, more social, more selective,
and here in far greater numbers than ever known.
But how can that information help keep people safe?
This is a really popular swimming beach,
arguably one of the most popular on all of Cape Cod,
but I've tagged white sharks literally 20 feet from the shoreline.
And so the research we're conducting right now is studying where sharks are hunting,
how they're hunting, and how that it relates to the environment,
to find patterns that will lead to predictability.
Like a weather report for shark activity.
When you've got healthy shark populations,
healthy seal populations,
and this predator-prey relationship happening right here, that's a good thing.
That's the restoration of a natural ecosystem.
Those are conservation efforts paying off, and that's what we want.
We want a well-balanced marine ecosystem.
This would enable wild animals to continue to thrive
even in a place heavily populated by humans.
We're trying to produce information right now
that will hopefully help save lives down the road,
but keep in mind, it's a good thing that the sharks are here.