After the Bite (2023) Movie Script
Okay,
one thing that we need to keep in mind,
let's say we get a ping
on the shark buoy.
If you use the phone
to let somebody know,
you still need to, like,
let the other beaches know.
The other thing is, is that
if you close your beach
because you visually see a shark,
you need to let
your parking lot person know.
If it's not a confirmed sighting,
you're closing the beach,
you know, it's, it's, it's on you.
Any questions?
- Okay.
- Have a great day.
Definitely now it's a lot more
stressful and less carefree.
We still have all the hazards
that we dealt with before,
like rip currents
and all of those things.
And then on top of that, we have this
additional hazard called white sharks.
- How are you?
- It's very hot.
It's good to see you. I know.
I'm glad you're back this summer.
Me too.
Thanks for coming out to
Cape Cod National Seashore.
It's a wild marine environment,
with sharks returning
as the top predators.
Sharks are here.
They're a dangerous animal.
Recreation has been established
in their absence.
That is what is so unique
about Cape Cod
relative to other areas where sharks
are present around the world.
So this is our boat.
This was new last year.
We got a lot of new tools
and equipment after the fatality.
If we see people swimming
far out, it makes us nervous,
so we will tell them to come in.
That's another new thing that
has come about because of the sharks.
How big do you think they are?
Well, we get a lot of different ones,
and they'll be anywhere from like eight
feet all the way up to like 14, 15 feet.
It's such an incredible thing
that's happening here.
But, you know, I realize that
not everybody sees it that way.
When you're at a place
like Cape Cod where,
let's face it, multiple species
love this area for different reasons,
and there's overlap here
of white sharks and humans.
And it's hard because a lot of people
who have lived here for decades,
they didn't have to think about this
until the past 10 years or so.
And so it's been
a big shift for them.
- GoPros?
- GoPros.
- All the accoutrements.
- Check. Yes.
- Hi, folks.
- How are ya?
Good. Good.
Have a good time out there?
Yeah, so let them people know,
as they're coming in
there was a shark sighting,
so they can't get in the water
for at least another 45 minutes.
Yeah. You... I told...
I forgot to tell them, yeah.
Hi. Good. How are you?
- I'm good.
- Good.
How you been?
Staying out of trouble?
Oh, come on. That's no fun.
- Yeah.
- Bye-bye.
And the spring line is clear.
No turning back now.
You're on for the whale watch.
Now, what are we gonna see?
Fin whale, humpback whale,
minke whale.
We do occasionally see
great white sharks out here.
But you won't see a shark
unless it's feeding.
And if it is, it's very colorful.
Remember that year when you were
seeing an average of like
four or five sharks every day?
Oh, yeah. I didn't even wanna tell you
how many I saw that day.
One came up next to the boat
in shallow water. We were hauling back.
It literally took my breath away.
It was... honest to God, I'm not
exaggerating. It was like "Jaws."
I'll tell you why I believe you.
The only one I got a really
good look at underwater
was that kind of big.
And I'm looking at it, and, you know, it
just had that slow, massive look to it,
like, I mean, do fucking
great whites even get that big?
It had to be like, this big a...
I'm not shitting you.
It was like this fucking big around.
The only two I've seen was when
it was really good visibility,
which leads me to wonder how many
I didn't see when it was shitty and murky.
There was a time some years ago
that I was writing about scientists
who were working
with the sharks in Cape Cod.
They arrived with
all the fanfare of saying
they'll be tagging all these sharks,
catching all these sharks.
Well, they caught
two the entire expedition.
And I went out there,
you know, on my first day,
went thinking I'd see a shark,
and that'd be it,
and I'd go home and write my piece.
Well, I had to keep going
back for 11 days.
The sharks weren't abundant then.
They would be quite
some distance from shore.
Every once in a while, they'd be found
near shore, maybe near Chatham,
but they were not near
the beaches.
Okay. We're in Truro
at Ballston Beach,
8where someone's been,
I don't know what.
Do we know what happened here,
anyone? Bitten by something or?
Chris Myers was in the water
with his son
when a great white
sunk his teeth into his leg.
He managed to get free
and was taken to the hospital
with eight deep gouges
and some torn tendons.
It seemed like more and more sharks
were arriving each year, and suddenly,
you're really getting them
near the beaches.
In August of 2018,
we were on the beachone afternoon
about to go in the water
when we heard
what sounded like shouting,
maybe a hundred yards
down the beach.
Call at Longnook Beach for a subject
possibly bitten by a shark in the thigh.
We got a call for a possible shark bite
at Longnook Beach.
I said, "Oh, there's no way
this is a shark bite,
"because it's very rare around here."
But once I saw it,
I knew that it was
not just something small.
This was like something
completely different.
He was bleeding considerably.
He had been bitten on the leg.
62 year-old William Lytton attacked
in waist-deep water off Truro Beach.
He escaped by punching
the shark in the gills,
something he had seen
on a nature show.
But not until
the poor boy was killed in Wellfleet,
did it really seem like,
"Okay, now they're here."
It was such a joyous summer day.
Late summer day.
Everybody's having fun,
whether you're surfing, boogie boarding,
swimming, beachcombing.
As good as a day
you could ask for on the Cape.
And, like, families were on the beach
and there were surf breaks all over.
And then Arthur was down here with his,
you know, good friend, Isaac.
Twenty-six-year-old Arthur Medici,
on his boogie board with his friend,
Isaac Rocha...
About 9:30, I was by myself.
I walked way down the beach,
same as always.
And there was two people in the water
already with their boogie boards,
putting on an incredible show,
and I was their little personal
cheerleader up on the hill.
I heard a tone.
And as I stood, I saw the blood.
Isaac was screamingat the top of his
lungs to help him, help him, help him.
Now, I'm looking down that hill
and I says,
"Just what the fuck
are you going to do?"
I went in.
A wave came up over Arthur's face
and I got underneath
and pulled him up on top of me,
because we couldn't move him
any further.
I did look down at one point,
and saw that his legs were
kind of laced open,
but no blood.
There was no blood around us.
All the blood was long gone.
I told both boys
how much I loved them
and I kissed them both
and hollered for God,
and cried
and waited for help to come.
I had no clue what the hell
had just happened.
I'm at Newcomb Hollow Beach
in Wellfleet, Massachusetts.
I've just seen a surfer
get bit by a shark.
It's about 300 yards down the beach.
I saw the whole thing happen.
But It was a hell of a hit, man.
I saw the whole thing happen.
It looks like they're carrying him
off the beach right now.
At this time, I have a report
of an unknown shark bite.
The lifeguards were
trying to work on him.
We have an unconscious male.
Severe leg injuries.
There was no helping this poor boy.
That morning I got the call.
We're inbound from
a closed area way to the east,
70 miles to the east of P-Town.
And as soon as I got service,
my daughter called.
She's like,
"I think my friend got killed by a shark."
After he was taken away,
it was such a stunned silence.
We just didn't know. We're kind
of looking at each other like, "Wow.
"Did we just get punched in the face?"
That's what it kind of
felt like, you know?
That is just... it's such a haunting
story. I feel so for his family and...
Violence can intersect
any moment practically,
it seems like,
but one wouldn't have thought
of a sunny afternoon
off the coast of New England
that a shadow was waiting.
It's the first fatal shark attack Cape
Cod has seen in more than 80 years.
Officials ordered Newcomb Hollow
Beach closed until further notice.
After a summer full of shark
sightings on Cape Cod
and one previous nonfatal attack,
it's getting harder and harder
to downplay the danger.
That was a turning point.
Okay. So thank you. It's now 6 p.m.,
September 27th, 2018,
and this is a meeting on sharks.
I wanna first start off
saying that our town is very distraught
and sad about the loss of Arthur Medici.
It has affected all of us deeply.
Tonight, we are here
to discuss what happened.
We have representatives,
experts that will answer questions
and give a brief description
of what may be done
to improve safety
on Cape Cod beaches.
So we are getting a pretty good idea
of when sharks are here,
where they are when they're here.
We haven't seen any major changes
in their predatory behavior.
We have had a lot of reports
of sightings that people have sent in
that have gotten a lot of attention.
I wanna remind our elected officials
that the death
of 26-year-old Arthur Medici
was not his fault, it was ours.
Government officials are
sitting behind these tables
telling us, we the people,
we can't do anything
in our own environment.
If you were standing there that day,
you'd be fighting for it.
This was a beautiful young man
who lost his life because
we've been sitting doing nothing.
On the day that it happened,
I think you were working.
And it was just me and Mom
down the Cape.
And I went to go grab my board,
and she's like,
"You're absolutely not going out today."
I was like, "Why not? I just, like,
worked a really hard shift.
"Like, I really wanna just go out
surfing. The waves are beautiful."
- And the waves are good, right?
- Like, it's a no suit day.
It was a no suit day.
And I was like, "I'm gonna go,"
and she, like, stalled me
for like 30 minutes and so
I was late going to the beach.
Because I told her,
"Absolutely under no circumstances
"will you let the girls go out and surf
"without me being there."
That's where your mother
put her foot down.
And I'm glad she did because,
you know--
She's the reason I wasn't
in the water at the time.
Exactly.
Good evening, everyone.
My name is John Kartsounis,
Wellfleet resident.
I'm the father of three children,
two of which have been lifeguards
in the past, one is senior lifeguard.
My daughter was present during
Arthur Medici's fatal attack.
It was horrific.
She tried to help as best she could.
I've been surfing and swimming
in the outer beaches for 35 years.
I won't allow my kids to go in anymore.
We have a problem here,
ladies and gentlemen,
and the problem is manmade.
So... excuse me.
So thank you. I appreciate it.
I mean, there's lots of people
here who feel that way about sharks--
I think public safety
is an important issue.
- Yes.
- That's the role of government.
Number-one role of government
is public safety.
Not shark safety.
Not shark conservation.
And I understand where some of the
advocates on that side are coming from,
but not to be
at the expense of humans.
And that's the issue here,
and we have to address it.
And I hope you all take it very seriously.
Thank you.
What you doing?
Getting rubber bands to put around
my wrist. This is how I work.
- You want more?
- I'm gonna get more.
Just have them ready to go.
With the emergence of Cape Cod
as a new seasonal aggregation
site for white sharks,
there's a lot of science
going on off the coast here.
You hand me that. Meg, Megan?
Thanks.
All the research we're doing here
is really to learn more
about these animals,
so that we can prevent the risk
of somebody having a bad
interaction with a white shark.
You got any more, Wayne?
This one's staying deep.
Yep... There's one just on
the other side of that guy.
It's on his port bow, it's a small one.
Yeah. That sounds good.
Well, we like action.
The number one question
I think we get asked is,
"How many of them are out there?"
And we haven't had an answer.
There's never been
an actual number.
So part of our mission is to catalog
the white sharks of Cape Cod.
We're gonna
put out some acoustic tags,
which will be those long-term tags that
will be picked up by a receiver array.
All right. Slow down. Slow down.
I'm in the glare here.
I should be right there
pretty close now.
Just, just stop there, John.
Just let them come to you.
Yeah, he's down.
Are we ready to go?
- Yes, sir.
- Okay.
As long as he doesn't spook, we're...
I like the way it's acting.
A little zigzag action.
He's down a little bit.
Bobbing and weaving.
I need him to slow down 'cause I don't
wanna knock the tag off the pole.
The degree of difficulty
is high on this one.
Yeah. Look at this.
It's a wormy one.
Down back if you need help.
Down a little. Don't turn.
Don't turn.
- Damn.
- Piece of work.
- Slow down.
- Out of gear.
Nine feet of water.
Down pretty good.
- Hold on, Greg.
- It's just enough.
We don't need that to pop off,
you know?
- You got him.
- Good job! Nice job.
- Yeah!
- All right, keep an eye! Keep an eye.
- That's great.
- Nice work. Victory, Captain.
There's an acoustic transmitter on that,
and that's gonna stay on.
That's why we use the dart.
The dart's gonna hold that in.
That'll ping for 10 years.
- There she goes.
- All right, you can...
Every time a tagged shark swims by
one of our real-time receivers,
people will immediately see
that information on their phone.
It's now integrated
with our app, Sharktivity.
There's also information
on which shark it was.
There's a photo of the shark.
It's really changed the way people
think about sharks off of our coastline,
and how frequently
they occur near shore waters.
Let's see if we're getting them.
So Joanie came by at 2:30
last night and left at 3:00.
- Who is that? Jodi?
- Joanie.
- Joanie?
- Yeah.
I don't know how big Joanie is, but--
All right.
Hopefully, this will work today.
We fly that all the time just so people
know that there are sharks in the water.
It's basically like you should
go in at your own discretion.
However, if we detect one
on our buoy or see one,
then we get everyone out of the water
and change it to a black flag.
- To black?
- Yep.
- Okay. Just wondered.
- Yep.
Have a great day.
I just saw a seal on the sandbar.
When we see a seal,
it makes us nervous.
That is a shark!
Sharks are so stealth.
They just sneak up on their prey.
The seals are really agile
so they can swim away really fast,
but obviously humans are not as agile.
You can see that fish a mile away, huh?
Sucker's in shallow water, man.
- Sure is, huh?
- Like, motivated.
Eight feet here,
and it's seven feet and it's going in.
It's got a pile of seals right there.
This sucker's hunting.
Greg Skomal, who is the one person
on the east coast
who really knows
what the circumstances are,
had always told me that sharks,
so far as he could tell,
would not enter into the surf zone
because they had an instinctive
fear of being breached.
Unhappily for me, he amended
that last year to say, "Well...
"not sure anymore.
"We now have seen occasions where
they go right into the surf after a seal.
"If they're chasing something, they'll
certainly go into the surf," he said.
- You see that?
- Yeah. That's a seal coming.
Is it?
That one has a scar on its back.
I just saw a divot, you know?
- D, can you photograph this?
- I will, yeah.
Oh, yeah. Look at that.
I can't see a wound. I see...
I mean, it's not like bloody or anything.
It's like a healed divot.
No, that's not, that's too old, Lis.
- Do you see it?
- I see it.
There's a white...
it looks white below the surface.
I don't live very far from here,
and two years ago, I rode out here in
August and it was later in the afternoon,
and I got off my bike and I just looked
out, and there was a white shark.
And I was like, "Oh, wow."
I spent about an hour watching it.
And then seals started passing through
really close to shore,
just traveling north or south.
And rafts of birds came in,
boats were going by, and I was just like,
we could do, like, a,
a little behavioral study here,
and look at seal behavior
and white shark behavior.
So, when we stand out here,
what we're looking at is
basically how seals
and white sharks transit,
or spend time
right off the bluff here.
Oh, wait. We got a seal.
Sorry. I have to get a...
Okay, Marjorie, you ready?
Ninety-four bearing.
I'm gonna get you distance.
- 142 heading north.
- Circling.
Interaction.
There was a interaction between
the first and third animal.
For some reason, the third animal got a
little too close and the first animal...
...flipped around
and gave a body check.
- That was interesting.
- That was interesting.
Seals can tell us a lot
about the ocean environment.
They're a species that reflects back
to us, ecosystem health.
That makes them
a great messenger for us,
and to be witnessing
the recovery of a species.
You know, there's this whole idea
of shifting baselines, right?
That what you grew up with
is what's "normal."
And oftentimes the story
of shifting baselines, is of decrease.
But here, we're having a shifting
of baselines upward with the seals,
and that's pretty,
pretty amazing, too.
People saying, "I didn't used to see
all these seals," and they're right.
They didn't.
I've spent a lot of time all over the
world. All kinds of places that I like.
But when I set foot on Muskeget,
the moment my foot hits the sand,
I'm in the Muskeget thing instantly.
Nothing else.
My first exposure was, I was nine
years old right after Dad got it.
And he came down on a Piper Cub,
the yellow planes with single engine,
and I had my best friend in the back.
And he landed out on that beach.
He dropped us off, got back on the
plane, said, "I'll be back" and took off.
And I distinctly remember
sitting there with my friend
and watching
the yellow plane disappear.
I bet.
And everywhere we walked,
there were seagulls attacking us,
'cause we were going through
a nest without knowing it.
It was like
Alfred Hitchcock's "Birds."
We found an old 2x4 or something,
and we were sort of... see if the plane--
How long did it take for your dad
to came back?
My memory and what I wrote
was just about two hours.
And eventually we saw
this little yellow plane coming in.
We think of ourselves as
the stewards of the island,
you know, to keep it the way it is,
except for the gray seals.
But you're a part of it.
You know what I mean.
You know exactly what I mean.
I don't want them to overtake
all the other species on the island.
You didn't see any pups
born here in 1960, did you?
The first one was found, I think, in '64,
and then there were 20 or 40.
And they had...
they were by name.
The scientist said, "There's Mariel."
I've told you that.
There's so few of them,
they could name them.
They named them.
And it was cute.
You know, 15, 20 years ago,
if you saw a seal,
it was sort of an event.
When I was a little kidand we spent
our summers in Cape Cod,
we might see two a summer.
And you kind of go,
"Wow. It's really cool.
"I was down at Ballston today
and there was a seal!"
People are very surprised,
even locals,
when they see seals here
because they were gone for so long
because of the bounties.
It was perceived that
the seals were responsible
for eating down
the commercially important fishes.
So the seals were bountied.
People were paid for noses
or pelts or flippers.
My grandfather
used to hunt for them, sure.
Muskeget was a great
hunting ground.
Used to be able to go out there
and get 'em and bring back the noses.
You could also cut the ear off.
Over 20,000 seals are
believed to have been bountied
in Massachusetts waters.
And then, in 1972,
the Marine Mammal Protection Act
was put in place to protect seals.
By the time they hit about 200,
I asked her, Valerie--
- Rue. Valerie Rue.
- Yeah.
And she said they'll never
get to more than a thousand.
There won't be enough feed,
or there'll be disease.
And she was obviously dead wrong.
We have all the problems
with the sharks. It's obvious.
I mean,nobody has
to think about that too much.
They're attracted by the seals
and there are a lot of seals.
It's clear that the population
has reached beyond what
it needs to be to be stable.
But with the Marine Mammal
Protection Act,
you can't delist gray seals
or any other marine mammals,
if I'm not... if I'm correct.
That should be changed.
So if they get beyond the point
that they have
to be to be self-sufficient,
it should be doable to make changes.
I mean,
they haven't gotten to a point
where they're beyond
the point of becoming...
of "self-sufficient,"
is I think what you just said.
It's not beyond that point
from a ecological point of view.
Well, what is the right point?
Well, the goal of
the Marine Mammal Protection Act
is to allow them to recover
to a certain range.
What is that figure?
It's not in the act.
No, it's not.
You can't reach it,
because it could go forever.
Our population is going like this,
and we're not controlling ourselves,
and you're controlling the seals.
I'm just giving her a hard time.
The seals are recovering,
they're doing well.
Marine Mammal Protection Act
has been a success.
But because we're so populated now,
the number has come in conflict
with a lot of our uses of the ocean,
and that's what we're trying to balance.
Right. But, number one,
if you let nature be nature,
they wouldn't be protected.
Point two, why would the seals
have it over people?
To me, that's a big argument.
It strikes at how you feel about
your relationship with wildlife
and if you feel like
you can dominate it and control it,
or if you can co-exist with it
as a, as a part of it.
The Endangered Species Act
is a huge success.
It's inarguably,
inarguably a huge success.
We just wanna pick up
a piece of that
that's a critical omission
in this legislation.
It's simple.
It's a delisting provision.
When a species
has demonstrably recovered,
take 'em off the protection list.
-Right.
-That's it.
That's what we're going for.
According to Crocker Snow,
on his island, Muskeget, there's...
what did he say, about 12 to 15,000?
And then on Monomoy,
there's 20 to 25,000.
So you put those numbers together.
When we talk to people,
we need to actually stress
that the marine balance equation
also means
that humans are part of the equation.
The other side, our opposition,
basically is telling the media
that humans are the problem,
that we shouldn't even be part
of the ecosystem.
Which is ridiculous, it's just stupid.
Well, people said to me,
"Oh, you wanna kill the seals,"
and I'm like, "No. No. I don't
wanna kill the seals.
"I want a balanced ecosystem,
"in which people are considered
to be part of the ecosystem."
- That's it. It's not that complicated.
- Yeah. And I wanna reiterate...
We never use the c-word.
We never use cull.
- Never ever.
- Yeah.
Now, Ron, are you aware that
the Atlantic White Shark Conservancy
has a booth every Saturday at
Newcomb Hollow Beach in Wellfleet?
I knew they did at some beaches.
I didn't know...
Well, this is an actual
propaganda booth.
- Yeah.
- Where it's in a parking lot.
They've got three or four interns.
And as beachgoers go by,
they're right there pushing
their leaflets and propaganda.
- How are you?
- What are we gonna be eaten by today?
We're with the Atlantic
White Shark Conservancy.
We got some shark smart tips here,
so if you go in the water,
this is all of our detection data.
So that's where we know
they have been detected.
How many off of Cape Cod?
There... At any given time,
we don't really know, you know?
They, they like it... we know
they like it here in the summer
and up until about October,
but the exact number that's here
is kind of hard to tell, yeah.
But there is not a lot
that are on this beach, right,
because of the sandbars and stuff?
So you can see we're right about here.
This is like a highway for shark activity.
So there's, at any given time,
a potential for--
- Yeah, they're going. Yeah.
- Oh, yeah, for sure.
So cool.
- I saw a shark yesterday.
- Yeah.
- Really? That's super cool.
- Yeah.
- With a fin up in the water.
- Yeah.
- Couldn't believe it.
- I don't know what kind it was.
Yeah. Probably a great white.
- They're usually inshore. Yeah.
- Yeah, that's...
We'll be here until 12:00, so when you
guys are back from your surf--
- Are, are those teeth?
- Yeah, those are real shark teeth.
This is a 3D print of how big
a white shark tooth can get.
Okay, if you're going to continue onto
the next one, it's about 11:30.
And about three-quarters of a mile,
right on the beach.
The one on the beach is just in shore.
So yeah, come on down this way.
I think it's bait fish
'cause there's more behind it.
Like there are a couple more
of those blobs,
but I see what you're looking at.
Really has a shape though,
you know?
- Bait fish.
- Did you see that?
No. What? What are we looking at?
What did you see?
A fin come out of the water.
A little triangle fin.
Not a mola?
Like a shark dorsal fin.
Barely broke the surface.
- How far out?
- Right there!
It's that thing right there.
- I see the blob.
- It's the blob.
Well, do you wanna
just call it to be safe?
- It's right in there.
- That's close.
Look at that...
like it's got definition.
Where's the flag?
- I'm blowing it.
- All right.
You can see it clearly
when one of the waves--
I trust you, Mike.
It was just like a smudge
and it was headed that way.
- Headed that way?
- It was headed that way, yeah.
But just to be safe, we keep
you out of the water for an hour.
Thank you.
How many cellphones you suppose
are pointed at us right now?
There's two others about,
200 feet away, if that.
We're right
in the damn swimming area.
Any questions? Any...
It's weird, though,
It was just so close.
Oh, yeah, they get really close.
Yeah. And then we all just went
swimming half an hour later.
- It's so weird.
- Yeah, it is.
- It's just something we live with now.
- I know.
I had a dream that there were people
swimming on the sandbar there,
and I saw a fin
and I had my whistle and it didn't work,
so I couldn't
get people out of the water.
And then the shark
caught a wave onto the shore
and bit everybody's feet.
And then I had a mass casualty incident,
and I was the only lifeguard there,
and I didn't have a phone.
And then one of the fire department guys
showed up with one roll of gauze,
and that's all we had to manage it.
It's on our minds a lot
and I'm even dreaming about them,
so I guess that says something.
We had to harpoon it today
out of Scituate Harbor.
Harpoon this fish.
And when they were getting ready
to pull the fish aboard,
they had
a great white shark attack it.
And you can see it took
a pretty good-sized bite out of it.
You got a moon. Seems like a lot of this
happens around the moon.
This would be in the money of the fish.
This would be
the fattest point of the loin
with the highest yield
in the shoulders of the fish.
And just from the bite radius
of that, that's a big shark.
If you saw what we just saw,
you'd never go back in the water.
So yesterday,
I got a scrape on my arm,
and I jumped in the water,
and it opened up.
And I was bleeding a little bit.
And I immediately thought,
it's a sign of being,
being a good marine biologist,
I thought, "Man, I wonder how far this...
the smell of this blood is going?
"I bet you it's going, you know,
at the molecular levels
"that these animals can sense it,
"it's probably already gone
all the way to Wellfleet
"and they're all rushing in my direction."
So I got out of the water.
You know, in shallow water
in Provincetown, worried about...
It's a sign that terror spreads
through academia as well,
as well as through the general public.
This is an interesting place,
because Cape Cod is very rich
in terms of fish life,
like sharks and, increasingly,
of course,
in marine mammals,
particularly seals and whales.
These sharks are great animals.
Anything that's living at the apex of
the food web is a pretty special creature.
And we're still learning so much
about them that we never used to.
What has been found out
with all the different tagging things,
those long-distance, distance tags,
they weren't what I learned
in graduate school.
These are... these animals range
over huge distances.
It's exciting.
But we're in a time of huge change.
With the radical change in the number
of seals and white sharks,
there is no doubt that
this system is in a state
of remarkable flux.
And it's understandable
that people are concerned.
Next on our agenda
is public comment.
Anyone who wishes to address
the the board can.
I know the names of two of the people
from the Wellfleet Group.
John Kartsounis and Drew Taylor
and your group.
You're still here, right?
My name's John Kartsounis,
Wellfleet resident.
Been occasionally
on the Cape for 35 years,
and I've been a resident of Wellfleet now
for seven years.
Now the reason why we're here is to...
present the public's perception
of what's going on at our hometown.
I've been recreating
in the waters off Wellfleet
since 1983.
I'm not a scientist, but I think I know
a lot about what's been happening
in our town's beaches.
We've gone from seeing zero seals,
to now we see an abundance
and an overpopulation of seals.
The question here is, we have
a law that's almost 50 years old
and we have special interest groups
that are telling us
that it is written in stone
and it cannot be changed,
but I think we have
to start somewhere.
I'm not a scientist
but I am a politician.
And I have my ear to the ground
and what I'm saying is that,
as we look for solutions,
exemptions from
the Marine Mammal Protection Act
is a very, very heavy climb.
Very heavy.
It can, it can...
it involves the entire country.
And not only local NGO groups
but you have national NGO groups.
So, whether or not I think
it's a good idea or not
is really irrelevant.
I'm looking for something about
this summer and next summer.
My personal opinion is that
that is not realistic,
at least in the short term.
- That's, you know--
- Well, you know what's heavy?
What's really a heavy load to bear
is "out of business" signs,
foreclosure signs,
and basically a depression.
Unless our public officials
start to think
in terms
of public health and safety,
and that people do have a right
to be at the beaches and to swim
and to recreate on Cape Cod,
as they have done for a hundred years,
without having to fear being killed.
To me, it all goes back to
the health of the ecosystem.
Somewhere between
the mid '80s and mid '90s,
whatever number it was then,
our ecosystem was flourishing.
There were seals,
you could surf-cast off the beach
and catch fish: stripers, blues,
flounder, whatever.
And then since then, you know,
the explosion of the seals
just kind of led us
to where we're at today.
I don't blame the seals and the sharks.
It's just no management planning
and poorly written laws.
I still tuna-fish with my father.
Him and I have fished together,
before I used to work for him.
So now the tables are turned,
now he gets to work with me.
I mean, it is neat
being able to come out here
and do the same thing with my father,
being the fourth generation.
But most fishermen know
what's going on and see the changes.
Up.
Things that we used to fish for here now
like codfish, or we used
to have good fluke fishing here,
there's no more fluke around here.
We blame the seals.
The bait fish don't wanna
come in because of them.
We see them come up with striped bass,
big striped bass.
So, you know, they're probably
eating the smaller fish.
All set.
For years, I caught lobsterand my wife
sold them out of our garage.
In the springtime,all the fishermen
would come from New York
and they come up here
for a week and go fishing.
And then when they went home,
they would come by my house
and load up with lobsters.
Then all the seals start showing up.
They can't catch a fish from the beach.
The whole springtime fisheries died,
our business died.
The motels lost the whole springtime.
- The bait and tackle shops went under.
- Yeah.
Everything, everything just collapsed
because... 'cause the seals came in.
And because of the
Marine Mammal Protection Act,
you can't touch 'em,
you can't look at 'em,
you can't even yell at 'em
as you go past 'em.
To me, it's like
the ecosystem is out of line.
Don't get me wrong,
I like seeing whales, seals,
stuff like that, to a degree,
but when it's too much, it's too much.
It's just been getting
worse and worse.
For the rest of my life,
we will still have this problem.
P-Town,
if you are feeling drop-dead gorgeous,
can I get a "Yes, God"?
Yes, God!
Now, I did just find out
that it's Shark Week up in here.
I hear y'all got some
man-eaters in the house.
I'm trying to live my life
So don't be the swimmer that I
Am looking to bite
Oh, my God.
No!
Now don't go hatin' the sharks
I couldn't if I tried
Their cartilage helps cure cancer
But if they bite you you die
The other night, I was surfing there,
and a big wave, they were all small,
except for one big wave.
And so I paddled out to see
if I can get another one.
I went off the...
I went off the bar.
And I think I saw a shark.
I'm almost positive it was now.
The way it swam, all I saw was the
very tip of what I believe was the fin.
Maybe it was the nose.
I don't know.
It was brown like a seal,
but Mark told me,
Mark Johnson says,
"Sharks are brown."
It's never quite been the same
since the fatal attack.
Hey!
It did cause a rift in the community.
Some of these people, not all of them,
but some of these people are acting like
the ocean's their little playground,
their swimming pool.
And they have no right to have...
and, you know, sharks have no right
to be in there or something, or seals.
Nah, it doesn't work that way.
And at first, I was very afraid.
But then I got, kind of,
accustomed to being out there.
I'm very careful.
I don't go out too deep.
Surfers put stripes on
the bottom of their boards now.
I guess it confuses
the sharks' sensory apparatus.
It seems to be effective.
We've got technology
out here now, buoys out there.
If untagged sharks go out there,
we don't know they're there.
But that's the way it is.
If you're in the water frequently,
chances are lots of animals
have seen you
that you didn't know were there.
I see it right on the bottom.
How big is this fish?
Got some girth.
She may be a transient, though.
That's a big old Gulf of Maine shark.
She's going to--
It's a big old
"anywhere she wants to" shark.
Yeah. Okay.
Do we...
are we giving up on this one?
It's just going in circles
down on the bottom.
I gave up on it.
That looks like it's gonna work.
I'm not so much interested
what these animals do every week.
Not even every day.
I wanna know what they're doing
every minute, every second.
And this is the tool to do that.
I can look if this shark's
accelerating toward a seal,
and I'll see if it is
because there's a camera.
So we can start to look at
its behavior in shallow water
as it relates to its natural prey,
the seals,
'cause we really,
you know, believe that
the better we understand
that predator-prey relationship
between sharks and seals,
when, where, and how these sharks
are attacking and killing seals,
the better equipped we're gonna
be to advise beach managers
and the general public as to
how to modify their behavior.
This one's out pretty good, so go ahead
and get, and get in position.
- What's our depth here?
- Seven feet, he's up.
Look at you doing a circle.
Maybe he'll come to me.
Come on, baby!
It's definitely curious about us.
Like, "What are you guys doing?"
I wish he would go downwind.
It's got a lot of speed.
- I really like this one.
- I do, too.
It's got some really
interesting evasive maneuvers.
Maybe we can try the right side,
I don't know.
Come up a little bit,
turn in, go down sea.
Go down. Oh, yeah.
- Go for it!
- Do it?
We got it!
Oh, mother-fa-la-la-la.
- Beautiful!
- You got him, man.
Isn't that amazing?
And she's right back in
working this area.
Right off the seals.
After every trip, I wanna go through
and see, like, who got a tag?
Was it... is it a shark that
we've identified in the past?
Is it a shark that's, that's new
that we've never seen before?
So I always kind of scan through
and look.
This is a beautiful profile shot.
So in this one,
you can really appreciate she's got
kind of like a rounded tip there,
no big notches,
but she's got a couple
little more distinct notches.
And there's different
dorsal kind of shapes.
Some of them have like
a hooked edge of the dorsal.
This is a good one.
When I'm first describing
this process to people,
a lot of times, they think I'm crazy
when I tell them, like,
"I can watch videos
and tell sharks apart."
They're like, "No, it's just a shark."
But they're really remarkably different.
When they've got great
coloration on their tail,
it's probably the most
imaginative feature.
It's kind of like looking
for shapes in the clouds.
All those little things
that just kind of jog our memory,
that's where a lot
of them get their nicknames.
A lot of people think they're
kind of silly nicknames
or that we're trying to make
these animals seem more human,
but it really is just a mental trick
to help us keep these sharks straight.
But to be able to actually have an
actual view of what the shark is doing
is really a game-changer
in terms of understanding
their movement, patterns,
and to get a better feel for the species.
I never, like,
stop being amazed by that fact
that we can go out and see
sharks we've seen, you know,
20 times before
over the past five years.
There's still so much to learn
about these animals.
A lot of people kind of
take it for granted
that this is the most famous
shark species there is,
but for a long time, the northwest
Atlantic white shark population
was the most mysterious white shark
population on the face of the planet.
Part of the importance of nature
and the life of a culture is
that it intersects the life
of the imagination.
It expands the territory
for what human thought can encompass.
If I stand on the shore at Longnook,
and I say, "There are sharks out there,
there are white sharks out there,"
I have expanded the range
and the reach of my imagination.
I am sharing that environment
with a great creature,
one of nature's creations.
They are a force that throws us
up against very mysterious
aspects of life.
Life, death, power, violence.
The truly unsympathetic
quality of life.
We like to think that
our lives are orderly
and can be easily maintained,
but sharks are one of the places where
we don't find cooperation
from the natural world,
in terms of our sense
of ownership and use.
It's so cute!
Yeah.
Have you seen anything?
Nothing yet.
Not moving, though.
No, no drift whatsoever.
I haven't seen shit out here.
The only thing I got
out here was some bait.
Yeah, right on. I'll let you know.
This collapse that we've had
with the fish, it's not the seals.
I think they're just a scapegoat.
They privatized fishing,
and it became a huge success
to some people,
to some organizations,
and they made tons of money off of it.
And then, that's the new norm.
Cod fish, haddock.
We've fished the shit out of those fish.
Now we're stuck
with underutilized species.
Skate wings and dogfish.
For us to get a basic day's wage
out of that underutilized species,
we gotta catch the limit.
A limit is 6,000 pounds of dogfish,
or 5,000 pounds of skate wing.
And this is such
a multibillion-dollar industry,
it's never gonna change until
we wipe it all the fuck out.
Like, there's something else
going on down there.
The water's warm.
I think this might be the new norm.
We're warming up pretty quick here.
Things start moving
and they move to colder waters,
so everything's marching north.
- Hey, Dre, a smooth-hound.
-No way. Really?
- He's alive.
- Cool!
They only catch these down south,
but with global warming,
they're startin' to come up here.
All right, I gotta get him back
in the water so he lives.
There he is.
All right. And we're gonna let him
go swim. There he goes.
I've been here a long time,
and I've never seen a bonito in like that.
I've seen them come,
but not that small ones.
They're a warm-water fish, you know,
they're from down south.
I've been on the pier
for 25 years right here
and I've never seen anybody
catch 'em like that. Never.
So that tells me something.
Human beings,
since the Industrial Revolution,
have grown up amidst
extraordinary technological changes,
but not among extraordinary
natural changes,
and that's what's happening
to our generations.
And that's a totally different thing
'cause we're not in control of them.
There's this pretty significant shift
that is happening in species
on a global level.
You have animals from the lower
latitudes that are coming up
because the waters are getting warm
and food sources are moving up
so the predators are following them.
And then, at the same time,
the polar ice caps are melting
so there are a lot of animals
from those higher latitudes
that are coming down looking for prey,
they're looking for suitable habitat.
Here we are right at that,
that middle crux
of everything
kind of all coming together.
Even if we want to be completely selfish
and focused on our own personal
human well-being,
it's important that we understand
what's happening in the ecosystem.
Since my graduate work, I've been trying
to understand how viruses evolve,
looking at influenza,
primarily in wild birds.
Water fowl is where you find
a lot of influenza,
naturally circulating in the wild.
We're talking about gulls,
and shorebirds, and ducks.
They share habitat with marine
mammals, and particularly with seals.
We know that you can get spillover,
a transmission that happens
from one species to another.
Perhaps people have heard about
so-called bird flu and swine flu.
Even though we have not been
seeing signs of virus in seals,
we wonder, did that necessarily
mean there was no virus
or was it possible that virus
was circulating out there
without seeing disease?
So we went out to Muskeget Island
to see whether or not
we could detect virus.
Oh, nice.
We're gonna roll, ready?
- You wanna roll him this way?
- Yeah.
Watch that back end, there.
Nice. Okay.
He's very feisty.
Good boy.
Are you ready? Everybody's out?
- We're good.
- Yeah, you're good. Hop off.
Nice job.
Good job.
That was not an easy one.
So we went out and did
these health assessments.
We were thinking
that there could be virus,
that's why we went out and looked,
but weren't really
expecting to find a whole lot.
We were actually
pretty surprised to find that
about 10% of them,
we were able to detect influenza virus.
And that's actually a pretty high level,
even for wild bird reservoirs.
It's a very real concern,
because if you have a scenario
where a virus is circulating
in the animals,
otherwise they seem like
they're healthy and just fine,
that gives the virus the opportunity to
continue to circulate in that population.
- There, finally.
- Ready? One, two, three.
- Nice work.
- Nice job.
Even if you're just
thinking about a virus
that's circulating in a gray seal,
the gray seal doesn't live in a bubble.
It's not easy for a virus to be able
to move from one species to another,
but if you have an animal
like manatees coming up from Florida,
maybe they have never had exposure
to influenza ever as a species,
so if they come into contact
with gray seals
that are shedding out influenza,
that introduces a higher likelihood
of having that
cross-species interaction.
All of those different reassortments
that can happen in wild animals,
the training ground on
another mammalian host,
and then the opportunity for those
new variants to come into humans
that we don't have
a pre-existing immunity to,
is a sort of scenario that
leaves us incredibly susceptible
to that becoming
a pandemic situation.
It's easy to get caught up in the kind
of "Jaws"-esque angle to things,
and take our eye off the bigger picture
that really we should be thinking about,
which is that the health of one species
really does impact all of us.
The black flag is up.
Apparently,
they sighted a shark at this beach.
So the water's clear for an hour.
- For an hour?
- Yeah.
- So...
- Okay.
I just thought...
Yeah, I just found out myself. Yeah.
They know how to deal with that,
I guess.
Yeah. I guess.
You know, just be careful. Yeah.
- Thanks for telling us.
- Yep, you got it.
I think I'll just have a small dish
of twist, chocolate vanilla twist.
- Okay.
- That's all I'll have, yeah.
Hello.
I think we'd be better off if we realize
that we're one strand in the web of life
instead of thinking ourselves as
the dominant species
that can control everything.
Humankind must learn humility
in the face of nature.
If you go out in the water, you gotta
take that chance,however slim it is.
Here you go.
This is the oldie
but goodie right here.
I used to be, like, four feet tall riding
this thing, getting pushed into the wave.
Do you think you might go out today?
I would like to just because
of what the event is.
Been a big part of my childhood, so...
But I haven't surfed on Cape
since the day it happened, so...
It's one of those things where
you have to kind of weigh everything,
and I understand, so just let me know.
I mean, you don't have to paddle out.
- You don't have to do anything.
- Right.
- You just sit there and watch.
- Yeah.
You are all welcome
to the 373rd version
of the Oldtimers Classic.
It is time for us all
to ride the wild surf.
Social Security, you're up next.
Social Security, 4:00, up front.
Bring your board down.
The real Cape Cod Oldtimers here.
Give 'em a hero's welcome.
John, oh, my God.
- Yeah, I thought this was a single thing.
- I know. Sweet, guys.
And off you go!
Ride the wild surf!
All right. Here we go.
Here we go!
- John's coming in.
- He's gonna get up in a little...
He gave up...
We got another pass
of the airplane overhead.
Looking for the man in the gray suit.
I'm not sure how you can see a shark
from 400 feet.
Clementin, come on down!
Clementin, please come over!
Grab your board.
Come on. I see you hiding.
I see you hiding.
- Katie!
- Katie!
Katie!
And Alexandra!
Okay, let's hear it
for the women surfers of Cape Cod!
Dana, what'd you do? I heard you had
the first wave of the heat.
- That's why I took it.
-You did.
- Yes.
- I did? Okay.
It's the longest wave
I've ever seen you ride.
Yeah. You were rocking out there.
- I was, like, screaming for you.
- Oh, yeah.
I heard the screaming
and I'm like, "Wow."
Third place, we have
Dana Ducktape. Dana!
Second place, Alexandria K...
because I can't pronounce her
last name. There she is. Thank you.
Holy moly. Look at that.
Two of their... one of their engines
is the value of this.
We're heading to the outer harbor.
There's several hundred gray seals that,
they don't literally haul out,
but they sit on the bottom
where it's really shallow.
All these animals, it's always
just the balance between, like,
food, rest, growth, sex,
and escaping predators, so,
"Let's find that niche of the beach where
I can take a nap and not get eaten."
There's a dead humpback.
Where?
West of the southwest corner,
right out here.
Do we go?
I said, "Scott, Bryan here.
"We heard there's a dead whale.
Skomal is on the water.
"And if he had a better location,
that would help us."
It's a... you know,
it's the needle in the haystack.
Like, in your mind a dead whale
is gonna be huge.
It's actually really...
they're really hard to find.
- Look at all the petrels.
- Yeah.
So, you can see all the little bits
that's kind of broke down on the whale.
That's wonderful fat for a small seabird
like a Wilson's storm petrel.
A whale floating at the surface
like this, as it breaks down,
it's gonna provide lots of feeding
opportunities for these birds.
And these birds will migrate south.
And they're so small, so fat stores
for them. It's really important.
So a boost like this will
probably be good for this...
Look at how many there are
just trailing behind us here.
It's beautiful.
You can see how quickly this animal's
being reclaimed into the ecosystem.
It's powerful, right?
Most people don't think
about whales when they die.
Right now, it's gassed up,
but if, if they create a cavity
and the gas is released, it'll sink.
That's when it becomes whale fall
and sinks to the bottom.
And then everything
on the bottom has a meal.
There have been sharks here.
Yeah. Those definitely look like
some shark bites.
That big open area
on the top of the whale,
those are all, all bites.
- Tow boat's here.
- Yeah, tow boat's here.
That's Noah. That's Noah Santos.
He's got a shark cage right there.
Oh, my God.
He is going in that water.
- What?
- Yeah.
That is amazing.
Part of the culture of Cape Cod.
Oh, Lord.
- That's not a whale watch though.
- That's the "Ock."
That's Greg that's on that.
- Greg Skomal?
- Yeah.
- Oh, cool. So he's here.
- Yeah.
Hi Lisa. I din't even see you here.
- Oh, yeah. No worries. How's it going?
- Good.
- Something was eating it.
- Oh, yeah.
The whites will come back.
They'll be on it.
- Yeah.
- It's a matter of time.
Yeah.
So, Bryan, you see the elliptical marks
on the side here?
- Yeah.
- There's a shark fin right there.
- I just saw a shark fin.
- You just saw a shark fin?
Dorsal fin, yup.
You guys look this way.
- There was just a shark tip.
- Yeah, right in the back.
Yep. Was that a...
Was that a white or a blue?
- That's not a white.
- Okay.
- Right behind, that's a shark!
- Look at that.
- Yeah.
- That's a white shark.
White shark!
- Big one.
- Yeah.
- RV "Ock," RV "Ock."
- Yeah!
This is "Volta" on 82.
- Holy!
- Why you coming to me?
He is looking at us.
- Don't come on my...
- Tagged.
Yeah. Get the dorsal fin, Bryan.
It's big. It's really big.
Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Oh, my God.
Holy fucking shit.
Oh, my God.
Fucking shit. Get me out of this!
Oh, my God.
- It's like watching Jaws go by.
- Oh, my God, babe, you did it!
Check that off the bucket list.
Holy shit!
Oh man, I was in the cage
when she went by. It was amazing.
I bet.
Big one?
Yeah, it was the biggest one
I've ever seen.
They're just as scary under water
as they are everywhere else.
The ecosystem
provides balance and stability
if we'll just give it
balance and stability.
Those of us who live here
see little snapshots.
As this ecosystem changes,
the snapshots become more telling.
One can imagine that Native Americans,
who lived on these shores,
probably saw little difference
in the coming and going of fish
and birds, and whales,
probably for millennia.
Now in a lifetime
we're seeing those differences.
My grandfather said that
when my ancestors came here,
there was an abundance of fish
such that
in this very location,
right in the harbor,
they fished with big wicker baskets.
It was a time of balance.
And this ecosystem right now
one feels, I certainly feel,
is in a state where
it's trying to find the balance.
But human activities
have imbalanced the system.
Finding that balance,
and finding how humans can live
with that balance is not easy.
- Really looks pretty today.
- Yeah.
- Did you see the whale?
- No, I didn't. Did you?
Yeah. Your mother, when she went down
and said there's a whale coming.
- I saw the spout.
- Oh, nice.
We're going up because
we're gonna pull the chair up.
You're pulling the chair up too?
All right.
- Yep.
- I don't know if there's any space.
That's all right.
We'll figure it out. Thanks.
The lifeguards are taking up their chairs,
so there's no more lifeguards.
Yeah, if there's a shark out there,
you won't know
unless you happen to see the fin.
Up, up, up, up, up!
When my parents bought
a piece of land in Wellfleet,
there were no houses,
it was all woods.
In those days, you felt
you'd reached an outpost.
The land was wild
and uncontaminated.
Only by a thumbnail is
the Cape still a wild place.
You know, it's this tiny
little vest pocket park.
Too many people use it.
It's just holding on,
just holding on for its ecological life.
I mean, I'm a little worried, because,
like, we're still in peak shark season
and people are still going
to be coming to the beach.
I mean, some of us will be around.
So, we'll keep an eye out,
like, unofficially.
We'll definitely be looking for sharks
'cause we can never turn it off,
and we can never stop lifeguarding.
Hopefully people will pay attention.
FAST TITLES MEDIA
one thing that we need to keep in mind,
let's say we get a ping
on the shark buoy.
If you use the phone
to let somebody know,
you still need to, like,
let the other beaches know.
The other thing is, is that
if you close your beach
because you visually see a shark,
you need to let
your parking lot person know.
If it's not a confirmed sighting,
you're closing the beach,
you know, it's, it's, it's on you.
Any questions?
- Okay.
- Have a great day.
Definitely now it's a lot more
stressful and less carefree.
We still have all the hazards
that we dealt with before,
like rip currents
and all of those things.
And then on top of that, we have this
additional hazard called white sharks.
- How are you?
- It's very hot.
It's good to see you. I know.
I'm glad you're back this summer.
Me too.
Thanks for coming out to
Cape Cod National Seashore.
It's a wild marine environment,
with sharks returning
as the top predators.
Sharks are here.
They're a dangerous animal.
Recreation has been established
in their absence.
That is what is so unique
about Cape Cod
relative to other areas where sharks
are present around the world.
So this is our boat.
This was new last year.
We got a lot of new tools
and equipment after the fatality.
If we see people swimming
far out, it makes us nervous,
so we will tell them to come in.
That's another new thing that
has come about because of the sharks.
How big do you think they are?
Well, we get a lot of different ones,
and they'll be anywhere from like eight
feet all the way up to like 14, 15 feet.
It's such an incredible thing
that's happening here.
But, you know, I realize that
not everybody sees it that way.
When you're at a place
like Cape Cod where,
let's face it, multiple species
love this area for different reasons,
and there's overlap here
of white sharks and humans.
And it's hard because a lot of people
who have lived here for decades,
they didn't have to think about this
until the past 10 years or so.
And so it's been
a big shift for them.
- GoPros?
- GoPros.
- All the accoutrements.
- Check. Yes.
- Hi, folks.
- How are ya?
Good. Good.
Have a good time out there?
Yeah, so let them people know,
as they're coming in
there was a shark sighting,
so they can't get in the water
for at least another 45 minutes.
Yeah. You... I told...
I forgot to tell them, yeah.
Hi. Good. How are you?
- I'm good.
- Good.
How you been?
Staying out of trouble?
Oh, come on. That's no fun.
- Yeah.
- Bye-bye.
And the spring line is clear.
No turning back now.
You're on for the whale watch.
Now, what are we gonna see?
Fin whale, humpback whale,
minke whale.
We do occasionally see
great white sharks out here.
But you won't see a shark
unless it's feeding.
And if it is, it's very colorful.
Remember that year when you were
seeing an average of like
four or five sharks every day?
Oh, yeah. I didn't even wanna tell you
how many I saw that day.
One came up next to the boat
in shallow water. We were hauling back.
It literally took my breath away.
It was... honest to God, I'm not
exaggerating. It was like "Jaws."
I'll tell you why I believe you.
The only one I got a really
good look at underwater
was that kind of big.
And I'm looking at it, and, you know, it
just had that slow, massive look to it,
like, I mean, do fucking
great whites even get that big?
It had to be like, this big a...
I'm not shitting you.
It was like this fucking big around.
The only two I've seen was when
it was really good visibility,
which leads me to wonder how many
I didn't see when it was shitty and murky.
There was a time some years ago
that I was writing about scientists
who were working
with the sharks in Cape Cod.
They arrived with
all the fanfare of saying
they'll be tagging all these sharks,
catching all these sharks.
Well, they caught
two the entire expedition.
And I went out there,
you know, on my first day,
went thinking I'd see a shark,
and that'd be it,
and I'd go home and write my piece.
Well, I had to keep going
back for 11 days.
The sharks weren't abundant then.
They would be quite
some distance from shore.
Every once in a while, they'd be found
near shore, maybe near Chatham,
but they were not near
the beaches.
Okay. We're in Truro
at Ballston Beach,
8where someone's been,
I don't know what.
Do we know what happened here,
anyone? Bitten by something or?
Chris Myers was in the water
with his son
when a great white
sunk his teeth into his leg.
He managed to get free
and was taken to the hospital
with eight deep gouges
and some torn tendons.
It seemed like more and more sharks
were arriving each year, and suddenly,
you're really getting them
near the beaches.
In August of 2018,
we were on the beachone afternoon
about to go in the water
when we heard
what sounded like shouting,
maybe a hundred yards
down the beach.
Call at Longnook Beach for a subject
possibly bitten by a shark in the thigh.
We got a call for a possible shark bite
at Longnook Beach.
I said, "Oh, there's no way
this is a shark bite,
"because it's very rare around here."
But once I saw it,
I knew that it was
not just something small.
This was like something
completely different.
He was bleeding considerably.
He had been bitten on the leg.
62 year-old William Lytton attacked
in waist-deep water off Truro Beach.
He escaped by punching
the shark in the gills,
something he had seen
on a nature show.
But not until
the poor boy was killed in Wellfleet,
did it really seem like,
"Okay, now they're here."
It was such a joyous summer day.
Late summer day.
Everybody's having fun,
whether you're surfing, boogie boarding,
swimming, beachcombing.
As good as a day
you could ask for on the Cape.
And, like, families were on the beach
and there were surf breaks all over.
And then Arthur was down here with his,
you know, good friend, Isaac.
Twenty-six-year-old Arthur Medici,
on his boogie board with his friend,
Isaac Rocha...
About 9:30, I was by myself.
I walked way down the beach,
same as always.
And there was two people in the water
already with their boogie boards,
putting on an incredible show,
and I was their little personal
cheerleader up on the hill.
I heard a tone.
And as I stood, I saw the blood.
Isaac was screamingat the top of his
lungs to help him, help him, help him.
Now, I'm looking down that hill
and I says,
"Just what the fuck
are you going to do?"
I went in.
A wave came up over Arthur's face
and I got underneath
and pulled him up on top of me,
because we couldn't move him
any further.
I did look down at one point,
and saw that his legs were
kind of laced open,
but no blood.
There was no blood around us.
All the blood was long gone.
I told both boys
how much I loved them
and I kissed them both
and hollered for God,
and cried
and waited for help to come.
I had no clue what the hell
had just happened.
I'm at Newcomb Hollow Beach
in Wellfleet, Massachusetts.
I've just seen a surfer
get bit by a shark.
It's about 300 yards down the beach.
I saw the whole thing happen.
But It was a hell of a hit, man.
I saw the whole thing happen.
It looks like they're carrying him
off the beach right now.
At this time, I have a report
of an unknown shark bite.
The lifeguards were
trying to work on him.
We have an unconscious male.
Severe leg injuries.
There was no helping this poor boy.
That morning I got the call.
We're inbound from
a closed area way to the east,
70 miles to the east of P-Town.
And as soon as I got service,
my daughter called.
She's like,
"I think my friend got killed by a shark."
After he was taken away,
it was such a stunned silence.
We just didn't know. We're kind
of looking at each other like, "Wow.
"Did we just get punched in the face?"
That's what it kind of
felt like, you know?
That is just... it's such a haunting
story. I feel so for his family and...
Violence can intersect
any moment practically,
it seems like,
but one wouldn't have thought
of a sunny afternoon
off the coast of New England
that a shadow was waiting.
It's the first fatal shark attack Cape
Cod has seen in more than 80 years.
Officials ordered Newcomb Hollow
Beach closed until further notice.
After a summer full of shark
sightings on Cape Cod
and one previous nonfatal attack,
it's getting harder and harder
to downplay the danger.
That was a turning point.
Okay. So thank you. It's now 6 p.m.,
September 27th, 2018,
and this is a meeting on sharks.
I wanna first start off
saying that our town is very distraught
and sad about the loss of Arthur Medici.
It has affected all of us deeply.
Tonight, we are here
to discuss what happened.
We have representatives,
experts that will answer questions
and give a brief description
of what may be done
to improve safety
on Cape Cod beaches.
So we are getting a pretty good idea
of when sharks are here,
where they are when they're here.
We haven't seen any major changes
in their predatory behavior.
We have had a lot of reports
of sightings that people have sent in
that have gotten a lot of attention.
I wanna remind our elected officials
that the death
of 26-year-old Arthur Medici
was not his fault, it was ours.
Government officials are
sitting behind these tables
telling us, we the people,
we can't do anything
in our own environment.
If you were standing there that day,
you'd be fighting for it.
This was a beautiful young man
who lost his life because
we've been sitting doing nothing.
On the day that it happened,
I think you were working.
And it was just me and Mom
down the Cape.
And I went to go grab my board,
and she's like,
"You're absolutely not going out today."
I was like, "Why not? I just, like,
worked a really hard shift.
"Like, I really wanna just go out
surfing. The waves are beautiful."
- And the waves are good, right?
- Like, it's a no suit day.
It was a no suit day.
And I was like, "I'm gonna go,"
and she, like, stalled me
for like 30 minutes and so
I was late going to the beach.
Because I told her,
"Absolutely under no circumstances
"will you let the girls go out and surf
"without me being there."
That's where your mother
put her foot down.
And I'm glad she did because,
you know--
She's the reason I wasn't
in the water at the time.
Exactly.
Good evening, everyone.
My name is John Kartsounis,
Wellfleet resident.
I'm the father of three children,
two of which have been lifeguards
in the past, one is senior lifeguard.
My daughter was present during
Arthur Medici's fatal attack.
It was horrific.
She tried to help as best she could.
I've been surfing and swimming
in the outer beaches for 35 years.
I won't allow my kids to go in anymore.
We have a problem here,
ladies and gentlemen,
and the problem is manmade.
So... excuse me.
So thank you. I appreciate it.
I mean, there's lots of people
here who feel that way about sharks--
I think public safety
is an important issue.
- Yes.
- That's the role of government.
Number-one role of government
is public safety.
Not shark safety.
Not shark conservation.
And I understand where some of the
advocates on that side are coming from,
but not to be
at the expense of humans.
And that's the issue here,
and we have to address it.
And I hope you all take it very seriously.
Thank you.
What you doing?
Getting rubber bands to put around
my wrist. This is how I work.
- You want more?
- I'm gonna get more.
Just have them ready to go.
With the emergence of Cape Cod
as a new seasonal aggregation
site for white sharks,
there's a lot of science
going on off the coast here.
You hand me that. Meg, Megan?
Thanks.
All the research we're doing here
is really to learn more
about these animals,
so that we can prevent the risk
of somebody having a bad
interaction with a white shark.
You got any more, Wayne?
This one's staying deep.
Yep... There's one just on
the other side of that guy.
It's on his port bow, it's a small one.
Yeah. That sounds good.
Well, we like action.
The number one question
I think we get asked is,
"How many of them are out there?"
And we haven't had an answer.
There's never been
an actual number.
So part of our mission is to catalog
the white sharks of Cape Cod.
We're gonna
put out some acoustic tags,
which will be those long-term tags that
will be picked up by a receiver array.
All right. Slow down. Slow down.
I'm in the glare here.
I should be right there
pretty close now.
Just, just stop there, John.
Just let them come to you.
Yeah, he's down.
Are we ready to go?
- Yes, sir.
- Okay.
As long as he doesn't spook, we're...
I like the way it's acting.
A little zigzag action.
He's down a little bit.
Bobbing and weaving.
I need him to slow down 'cause I don't
wanna knock the tag off the pole.
The degree of difficulty
is high on this one.
Yeah. Look at this.
It's a wormy one.
Down back if you need help.
Down a little. Don't turn.
Don't turn.
- Damn.
- Piece of work.
- Slow down.
- Out of gear.
Nine feet of water.
Down pretty good.
- Hold on, Greg.
- It's just enough.
We don't need that to pop off,
you know?
- You got him.
- Good job! Nice job.
- Yeah!
- All right, keep an eye! Keep an eye.
- That's great.
- Nice work. Victory, Captain.
There's an acoustic transmitter on that,
and that's gonna stay on.
That's why we use the dart.
The dart's gonna hold that in.
That'll ping for 10 years.
- There she goes.
- All right, you can...
Every time a tagged shark swims by
one of our real-time receivers,
people will immediately see
that information on their phone.
It's now integrated
with our app, Sharktivity.
There's also information
on which shark it was.
There's a photo of the shark.
It's really changed the way people
think about sharks off of our coastline,
and how frequently
they occur near shore waters.
Let's see if we're getting them.
So Joanie came by at 2:30
last night and left at 3:00.
- Who is that? Jodi?
- Joanie.
- Joanie?
- Yeah.
I don't know how big Joanie is, but--
All right.
Hopefully, this will work today.
We fly that all the time just so people
know that there are sharks in the water.
It's basically like you should
go in at your own discretion.
However, if we detect one
on our buoy or see one,
then we get everyone out of the water
and change it to a black flag.
- To black?
- Yep.
- Okay. Just wondered.
- Yep.
Have a great day.
I just saw a seal on the sandbar.
When we see a seal,
it makes us nervous.
That is a shark!
Sharks are so stealth.
They just sneak up on their prey.
The seals are really agile
so they can swim away really fast,
but obviously humans are not as agile.
You can see that fish a mile away, huh?
Sucker's in shallow water, man.
- Sure is, huh?
- Like, motivated.
Eight feet here,
and it's seven feet and it's going in.
It's got a pile of seals right there.
This sucker's hunting.
Greg Skomal, who is the one person
on the east coast
who really knows
what the circumstances are,
had always told me that sharks,
so far as he could tell,
would not enter into the surf zone
because they had an instinctive
fear of being breached.
Unhappily for me, he amended
that last year to say, "Well...
"not sure anymore.
"We now have seen occasions where
they go right into the surf after a seal.
"If they're chasing something, they'll
certainly go into the surf," he said.
- You see that?
- Yeah. That's a seal coming.
Is it?
That one has a scar on its back.
I just saw a divot, you know?
- D, can you photograph this?
- I will, yeah.
Oh, yeah. Look at that.
I can't see a wound. I see...
I mean, it's not like bloody or anything.
It's like a healed divot.
No, that's not, that's too old, Lis.
- Do you see it?
- I see it.
There's a white...
it looks white below the surface.
I don't live very far from here,
and two years ago, I rode out here in
August and it was later in the afternoon,
and I got off my bike and I just looked
out, and there was a white shark.
And I was like, "Oh, wow."
I spent about an hour watching it.
And then seals started passing through
really close to shore,
just traveling north or south.
And rafts of birds came in,
boats were going by, and I was just like,
we could do, like, a,
a little behavioral study here,
and look at seal behavior
and white shark behavior.
So, when we stand out here,
what we're looking at is
basically how seals
and white sharks transit,
or spend time
right off the bluff here.
Oh, wait. We got a seal.
Sorry. I have to get a...
Okay, Marjorie, you ready?
Ninety-four bearing.
I'm gonna get you distance.
- 142 heading north.
- Circling.
Interaction.
There was a interaction between
the first and third animal.
For some reason, the third animal got a
little too close and the first animal...
...flipped around
and gave a body check.
- That was interesting.
- That was interesting.
Seals can tell us a lot
about the ocean environment.
They're a species that reflects back
to us, ecosystem health.
That makes them
a great messenger for us,
and to be witnessing
the recovery of a species.
You know, there's this whole idea
of shifting baselines, right?
That what you grew up with
is what's "normal."
And oftentimes the story
of shifting baselines, is of decrease.
But here, we're having a shifting
of baselines upward with the seals,
and that's pretty,
pretty amazing, too.
People saying, "I didn't used to see
all these seals," and they're right.
They didn't.
I've spent a lot of time all over the
world. All kinds of places that I like.
But when I set foot on Muskeget,
the moment my foot hits the sand,
I'm in the Muskeget thing instantly.
Nothing else.
My first exposure was, I was nine
years old right after Dad got it.
And he came down on a Piper Cub,
the yellow planes with single engine,
and I had my best friend in the back.
And he landed out on that beach.
He dropped us off, got back on the
plane, said, "I'll be back" and took off.
And I distinctly remember
sitting there with my friend
and watching
the yellow plane disappear.
I bet.
And everywhere we walked,
there were seagulls attacking us,
'cause we were going through
a nest without knowing it.
It was like
Alfred Hitchcock's "Birds."
We found an old 2x4 or something,
and we were sort of... see if the plane--
How long did it take for your dad
to came back?
My memory and what I wrote
was just about two hours.
And eventually we saw
this little yellow plane coming in.
We think of ourselves as
the stewards of the island,
you know, to keep it the way it is,
except for the gray seals.
But you're a part of it.
You know what I mean.
You know exactly what I mean.
I don't want them to overtake
all the other species on the island.
You didn't see any pups
born here in 1960, did you?
The first one was found, I think, in '64,
and then there were 20 or 40.
And they had...
they were by name.
The scientist said, "There's Mariel."
I've told you that.
There's so few of them,
they could name them.
They named them.
And it was cute.
You know, 15, 20 years ago,
if you saw a seal,
it was sort of an event.
When I was a little kidand we spent
our summers in Cape Cod,
we might see two a summer.
And you kind of go,
"Wow. It's really cool.
"I was down at Ballston today
and there was a seal!"
People are very surprised,
even locals,
when they see seals here
because they were gone for so long
because of the bounties.
It was perceived that
the seals were responsible
for eating down
the commercially important fishes.
So the seals were bountied.
People were paid for noses
or pelts or flippers.
My grandfather
used to hunt for them, sure.
Muskeget was a great
hunting ground.
Used to be able to go out there
and get 'em and bring back the noses.
You could also cut the ear off.
Over 20,000 seals are
believed to have been bountied
in Massachusetts waters.
And then, in 1972,
the Marine Mammal Protection Act
was put in place to protect seals.
By the time they hit about 200,
I asked her, Valerie--
- Rue. Valerie Rue.
- Yeah.
And she said they'll never
get to more than a thousand.
There won't be enough feed,
or there'll be disease.
And she was obviously dead wrong.
We have all the problems
with the sharks. It's obvious.
I mean,nobody has
to think about that too much.
They're attracted by the seals
and there are a lot of seals.
It's clear that the population
has reached beyond what
it needs to be to be stable.
But with the Marine Mammal
Protection Act,
you can't delist gray seals
or any other marine mammals,
if I'm not... if I'm correct.
That should be changed.
So if they get beyond the point
that they have
to be to be self-sufficient,
it should be doable to make changes.
I mean,
they haven't gotten to a point
where they're beyond
the point of becoming...
of "self-sufficient,"
is I think what you just said.
It's not beyond that point
from a ecological point of view.
Well, what is the right point?
Well, the goal of
the Marine Mammal Protection Act
is to allow them to recover
to a certain range.
What is that figure?
It's not in the act.
No, it's not.
You can't reach it,
because it could go forever.
Our population is going like this,
and we're not controlling ourselves,
and you're controlling the seals.
I'm just giving her a hard time.
The seals are recovering,
they're doing well.
Marine Mammal Protection Act
has been a success.
But because we're so populated now,
the number has come in conflict
with a lot of our uses of the ocean,
and that's what we're trying to balance.
Right. But, number one,
if you let nature be nature,
they wouldn't be protected.
Point two, why would the seals
have it over people?
To me, that's a big argument.
It strikes at how you feel about
your relationship with wildlife
and if you feel like
you can dominate it and control it,
or if you can co-exist with it
as a, as a part of it.
The Endangered Species Act
is a huge success.
It's inarguably,
inarguably a huge success.
We just wanna pick up
a piece of that
that's a critical omission
in this legislation.
It's simple.
It's a delisting provision.
When a species
has demonstrably recovered,
take 'em off the protection list.
-Right.
-That's it.
That's what we're going for.
According to Crocker Snow,
on his island, Muskeget, there's...
what did he say, about 12 to 15,000?
And then on Monomoy,
there's 20 to 25,000.
So you put those numbers together.
When we talk to people,
we need to actually stress
that the marine balance equation
also means
that humans are part of the equation.
The other side, our opposition,
basically is telling the media
that humans are the problem,
that we shouldn't even be part
of the ecosystem.
Which is ridiculous, it's just stupid.
Well, people said to me,
"Oh, you wanna kill the seals,"
and I'm like, "No. No. I don't
wanna kill the seals.
"I want a balanced ecosystem,
"in which people are considered
to be part of the ecosystem."
- That's it. It's not that complicated.
- Yeah. And I wanna reiterate...
We never use the c-word.
We never use cull.
- Never ever.
- Yeah.
Now, Ron, are you aware that
the Atlantic White Shark Conservancy
has a booth every Saturday at
Newcomb Hollow Beach in Wellfleet?
I knew they did at some beaches.
I didn't know...
Well, this is an actual
propaganda booth.
- Yeah.
- Where it's in a parking lot.
They've got three or four interns.
And as beachgoers go by,
they're right there pushing
their leaflets and propaganda.
- How are you?
- What are we gonna be eaten by today?
We're with the Atlantic
White Shark Conservancy.
We got some shark smart tips here,
so if you go in the water,
this is all of our detection data.
So that's where we know
they have been detected.
How many off of Cape Cod?
There... At any given time,
we don't really know, you know?
They, they like it... we know
they like it here in the summer
and up until about October,
but the exact number that's here
is kind of hard to tell, yeah.
But there is not a lot
that are on this beach, right,
because of the sandbars and stuff?
So you can see we're right about here.
This is like a highway for shark activity.
So there's, at any given time,
a potential for--
- Yeah, they're going. Yeah.
- Oh, yeah, for sure.
So cool.
- I saw a shark yesterday.
- Yeah.
- Really? That's super cool.
- Yeah.
- With a fin up in the water.
- Yeah.
- Couldn't believe it.
- I don't know what kind it was.
Yeah. Probably a great white.
- They're usually inshore. Yeah.
- Yeah, that's...
We'll be here until 12:00, so when you
guys are back from your surf--
- Are, are those teeth?
- Yeah, those are real shark teeth.
This is a 3D print of how big
a white shark tooth can get.
Okay, if you're going to continue onto
the next one, it's about 11:30.
And about three-quarters of a mile,
right on the beach.
The one on the beach is just in shore.
So yeah, come on down this way.
I think it's bait fish
'cause there's more behind it.
Like there are a couple more
of those blobs,
but I see what you're looking at.
Really has a shape though,
you know?
- Bait fish.
- Did you see that?
No. What? What are we looking at?
What did you see?
A fin come out of the water.
A little triangle fin.
Not a mola?
Like a shark dorsal fin.
Barely broke the surface.
- How far out?
- Right there!
It's that thing right there.
- I see the blob.
- It's the blob.
Well, do you wanna
just call it to be safe?
- It's right in there.
- That's close.
Look at that...
like it's got definition.
Where's the flag?
- I'm blowing it.
- All right.
You can see it clearly
when one of the waves--
I trust you, Mike.
It was just like a smudge
and it was headed that way.
- Headed that way?
- It was headed that way, yeah.
But just to be safe, we keep
you out of the water for an hour.
Thank you.
How many cellphones you suppose
are pointed at us right now?
There's two others about,
200 feet away, if that.
We're right
in the damn swimming area.
Any questions? Any...
It's weird, though,
It was just so close.
Oh, yeah, they get really close.
Yeah. And then we all just went
swimming half an hour later.
- It's so weird.
- Yeah, it is.
- It's just something we live with now.
- I know.
I had a dream that there were people
swimming on the sandbar there,
and I saw a fin
and I had my whistle and it didn't work,
so I couldn't
get people out of the water.
And then the shark
caught a wave onto the shore
and bit everybody's feet.
And then I had a mass casualty incident,
and I was the only lifeguard there,
and I didn't have a phone.
And then one of the fire department guys
showed up with one roll of gauze,
and that's all we had to manage it.
It's on our minds a lot
and I'm even dreaming about them,
so I guess that says something.
We had to harpoon it today
out of Scituate Harbor.
Harpoon this fish.
And when they were getting ready
to pull the fish aboard,
they had
a great white shark attack it.
And you can see it took
a pretty good-sized bite out of it.
You got a moon. Seems like a lot of this
happens around the moon.
This would be in the money of the fish.
This would be
the fattest point of the loin
with the highest yield
in the shoulders of the fish.
And just from the bite radius
of that, that's a big shark.
If you saw what we just saw,
you'd never go back in the water.
So yesterday,
I got a scrape on my arm,
and I jumped in the water,
and it opened up.
And I was bleeding a little bit.
And I immediately thought,
it's a sign of being,
being a good marine biologist,
I thought, "Man, I wonder how far this...
the smell of this blood is going?
"I bet you it's going, you know,
at the molecular levels
"that these animals can sense it,
"it's probably already gone
all the way to Wellfleet
"and they're all rushing in my direction."
So I got out of the water.
You know, in shallow water
in Provincetown, worried about...
It's a sign that terror spreads
through academia as well,
as well as through the general public.
This is an interesting place,
because Cape Cod is very rich
in terms of fish life,
like sharks and, increasingly,
of course,
in marine mammals,
particularly seals and whales.
These sharks are great animals.
Anything that's living at the apex of
the food web is a pretty special creature.
And we're still learning so much
about them that we never used to.
What has been found out
with all the different tagging things,
those long-distance, distance tags,
they weren't what I learned
in graduate school.
These are... these animals range
over huge distances.
It's exciting.
But we're in a time of huge change.
With the radical change in the number
of seals and white sharks,
there is no doubt that
this system is in a state
of remarkable flux.
And it's understandable
that people are concerned.
Next on our agenda
is public comment.
Anyone who wishes to address
the the board can.
I know the names of two of the people
from the Wellfleet Group.
John Kartsounis and Drew Taylor
and your group.
You're still here, right?
My name's John Kartsounis,
Wellfleet resident.
Been occasionally
on the Cape for 35 years,
and I've been a resident of Wellfleet now
for seven years.
Now the reason why we're here is to...
present the public's perception
of what's going on at our hometown.
I've been recreating
in the waters off Wellfleet
since 1983.
I'm not a scientist, but I think I know
a lot about what's been happening
in our town's beaches.
We've gone from seeing zero seals,
to now we see an abundance
and an overpopulation of seals.
The question here is, we have
a law that's almost 50 years old
and we have special interest groups
that are telling us
that it is written in stone
and it cannot be changed,
but I think we have
to start somewhere.
I'm not a scientist
but I am a politician.
And I have my ear to the ground
and what I'm saying is that,
as we look for solutions,
exemptions from
the Marine Mammal Protection Act
is a very, very heavy climb.
Very heavy.
It can, it can...
it involves the entire country.
And not only local NGO groups
but you have national NGO groups.
So, whether or not I think
it's a good idea or not
is really irrelevant.
I'm looking for something about
this summer and next summer.
My personal opinion is that
that is not realistic,
at least in the short term.
- That's, you know--
- Well, you know what's heavy?
What's really a heavy load to bear
is "out of business" signs,
foreclosure signs,
and basically a depression.
Unless our public officials
start to think
in terms
of public health and safety,
and that people do have a right
to be at the beaches and to swim
and to recreate on Cape Cod,
as they have done for a hundred years,
without having to fear being killed.
To me, it all goes back to
the health of the ecosystem.
Somewhere between
the mid '80s and mid '90s,
whatever number it was then,
our ecosystem was flourishing.
There were seals,
you could surf-cast off the beach
and catch fish: stripers, blues,
flounder, whatever.
And then since then, you know,
the explosion of the seals
just kind of led us
to where we're at today.
I don't blame the seals and the sharks.
It's just no management planning
and poorly written laws.
I still tuna-fish with my father.
Him and I have fished together,
before I used to work for him.
So now the tables are turned,
now he gets to work with me.
I mean, it is neat
being able to come out here
and do the same thing with my father,
being the fourth generation.
But most fishermen know
what's going on and see the changes.
Up.
Things that we used to fish for here now
like codfish, or we used
to have good fluke fishing here,
there's no more fluke around here.
We blame the seals.
The bait fish don't wanna
come in because of them.
We see them come up with striped bass,
big striped bass.
So, you know, they're probably
eating the smaller fish.
All set.
For years, I caught lobsterand my wife
sold them out of our garage.
In the springtime,all the fishermen
would come from New York
and they come up here
for a week and go fishing.
And then when they went home,
they would come by my house
and load up with lobsters.
Then all the seals start showing up.
They can't catch a fish from the beach.
The whole springtime fisheries died,
our business died.
The motels lost the whole springtime.
- The bait and tackle shops went under.
- Yeah.
Everything, everything just collapsed
because... 'cause the seals came in.
And because of the
Marine Mammal Protection Act,
you can't touch 'em,
you can't look at 'em,
you can't even yell at 'em
as you go past 'em.
To me, it's like
the ecosystem is out of line.
Don't get me wrong,
I like seeing whales, seals,
stuff like that, to a degree,
but when it's too much, it's too much.
It's just been getting
worse and worse.
For the rest of my life,
we will still have this problem.
P-Town,
if you are feeling drop-dead gorgeous,
can I get a "Yes, God"?
Yes, God!
Now, I did just find out
that it's Shark Week up in here.
I hear y'all got some
man-eaters in the house.
I'm trying to live my life
So don't be the swimmer that I
Am looking to bite
Oh, my God.
No!
Now don't go hatin' the sharks
I couldn't if I tried
Their cartilage helps cure cancer
But if they bite you you die
The other night, I was surfing there,
and a big wave, they were all small,
except for one big wave.
And so I paddled out to see
if I can get another one.
I went off the...
I went off the bar.
And I think I saw a shark.
I'm almost positive it was now.
The way it swam, all I saw was the
very tip of what I believe was the fin.
Maybe it was the nose.
I don't know.
It was brown like a seal,
but Mark told me,
Mark Johnson says,
"Sharks are brown."
It's never quite been the same
since the fatal attack.
Hey!
It did cause a rift in the community.
Some of these people, not all of them,
but some of these people are acting like
the ocean's their little playground,
their swimming pool.
And they have no right to have...
and, you know, sharks have no right
to be in there or something, or seals.
Nah, it doesn't work that way.
And at first, I was very afraid.
But then I got, kind of,
accustomed to being out there.
I'm very careful.
I don't go out too deep.
Surfers put stripes on
the bottom of their boards now.
I guess it confuses
the sharks' sensory apparatus.
It seems to be effective.
We've got technology
out here now, buoys out there.
If untagged sharks go out there,
we don't know they're there.
But that's the way it is.
If you're in the water frequently,
chances are lots of animals
have seen you
that you didn't know were there.
I see it right on the bottom.
How big is this fish?
Got some girth.
She may be a transient, though.
That's a big old Gulf of Maine shark.
She's going to--
It's a big old
"anywhere she wants to" shark.
Yeah. Okay.
Do we...
are we giving up on this one?
It's just going in circles
down on the bottom.
I gave up on it.
That looks like it's gonna work.
I'm not so much interested
what these animals do every week.
Not even every day.
I wanna know what they're doing
every minute, every second.
And this is the tool to do that.
I can look if this shark's
accelerating toward a seal,
and I'll see if it is
because there's a camera.
So we can start to look at
its behavior in shallow water
as it relates to its natural prey,
the seals,
'cause we really,
you know, believe that
the better we understand
that predator-prey relationship
between sharks and seals,
when, where, and how these sharks
are attacking and killing seals,
the better equipped we're gonna
be to advise beach managers
and the general public as to
how to modify their behavior.
This one's out pretty good, so go ahead
and get, and get in position.
- What's our depth here?
- Seven feet, he's up.
Look at you doing a circle.
Maybe he'll come to me.
Come on, baby!
It's definitely curious about us.
Like, "What are you guys doing?"
I wish he would go downwind.
It's got a lot of speed.
- I really like this one.
- I do, too.
It's got some really
interesting evasive maneuvers.
Maybe we can try the right side,
I don't know.
Come up a little bit,
turn in, go down sea.
Go down. Oh, yeah.
- Go for it!
- Do it?
We got it!
Oh, mother-fa-la-la-la.
- Beautiful!
- You got him, man.
Isn't that amazing?
And she's right back in
working this area.
Right off the seals.
After every trip, I wanna go through
and see, like, who got a tag?
Was it... is it a shark that
we've identified in the past?
Is it a shark that's, that's new
that we've never seen before?
So I always kind of scan through
and look.
This is a beautiful profile shot.
So in this one,
you can really appreciate she's got
kind of like a rounded tip there,
no big notches,
but she's got a couple
little more distinct notches.
And there's different
dorsal kind of shapes.
Some of them have like
a hooked edge of the dorsal.
This is a good one.
When I'm first describing
this process to people,
a lot of times, they think I'm crazy
when I tell them, like,
"I can watch videos
and tell sharks apart."
They're like, "No, it's just a shark."
But they're really remarkably different.
When they've got great
coloration on their tail,
it's probably the most
imaginative feature.
It's kind of like looking
for shapes in the clouds.
All those little things
that just kind of jog our memory,
that's where a lot
of them get their nicknames.
A lot of people think they're
kind of silly nicknames
or that we're trying to make
these animals seem more human,
but it really is just a mental trick
to help us keep these sharks straight.
But to be able to actually have an
actual view of what the shark is doing
is really a game-changer
in terms of understanding
their movement, patterns,
and to get a better feel for the species.
I never, like,
stop being amazed by that fact
that we can go out and see
sharks we've seen, you know,
20 times before
over the past five years.
There's still so much to learn
about these animals.
A lot of people kind of
take it for granted
that this is the most famous
shark species there is,
but for a long time, the northwest
Atlantic white shark population
was the most mysterious white shark
population on the face of the planet.
Part of the importance of nature
and the life of a culture is
that it intersects the life
of the imagination.
It expands the territory
for what human thought can encompass.
If I stand on the shore at Longnook,
and I say, "There are sharks out there,
there are white sharks out there,"
I have expanded the range
and the reach of my imagination.
I am sharing that environment
with a great creature,
one of nature's creations.
They are a force that throws us
up against very mysterious
aspects of life.
Life, death, power, violence.
The truly unsympathetic
quality of life.
We like to think that
our lives are orderly
and can be easily maintained,
but sharks are one of the places where
we don't find cooperation
from the natural world,
in terms of our sense
of ownership and use.
It's so cute!
Yeah.
Have you seen anything?
Nothing yet.
Not moving, though.
No, no drift whatsoever.
I haven't seen shit out here.
The only thing I got
out here was some bait.
Yeah, right on. I'll let you know.
This collapse that we've had
with the fish, it's not the seals.
I think they're just a scapegoat.
They privatized fishing,
and it became a huge success
to some people,
to some organizations,
and they made tons of money off of it.
And then, that's the new norm.
Cod fish, haddock.
We've fished the shit out of those fish.
Now we're stuck
with underutilized species.
Skate wings and dogfish.
For us to get a basic day's wage
out of that underutilized species,
we gotta catch the limit.
A limit is 6,000 pounds of dogfish,
or 5,000 pounds of skate wing.
And this is such
a multibillion-dollar industry,
it's never gonna change until
we wipe it all the fuck out.
Like, there's something else
going on down there.
The water's warm.
I think this might be the new norm.
We're warming up pretty quick here.
Things start moving
and they move to colder waters,
so everything's marching north.
- Hey, Dre, a smooth-hound.
-No way. Really?
- He's alive.
- Cool!
They only catch these down south,
but with global warming,
they're startin' to come up here.
All right, I gotta get him back
in the water so he lives.
There he is.
All right. And we're gonna let him
go swim. There he goes.
I've been here a long time,
and I've never seen a bonito in like that.
I've seen them come,
but not that small ones.
They're a warm-water fish, you know,
they're from down south.
I've been on the pier
for 25 years right here
and I've never seen anybody
catch 'em like that. Never.
So that tells me something.
Human beings,
since the Industrial Revolution,
have grown up amidst
extraordinary technological changes,
but not among extraordinary
natural changes,
and that's what's happening
to our generations.
And that's a totally different thing
'cause we're not in control of them.
There's this pretty significant shift
that is happening in species
on a global level.
You have animals from the lower
latitudes that are coming up
because the waters are getting warm
and food sources are moving up
so the predators are following them.
And then, at the same time,
the polar ice caps are melting
so there are a lot of animals
from those higher latitudes
that are coming down looking for prey,
they're looking for suitable habitat.
Here we are right at that,
that middle crux
of everything
kind of all coming together.
Even if we want to be completely selfish
and focused on our own personal
human well-being,
it's important that we understand
what's happening in the ecosystem.
Since my graduate work, I've been trying
to understand how viruses evolve,
looking at influenza,
primarily in wild birds.
Water fowl is where you find
a lot of influenza,
naturally circulating in the wild.
We're talking about gulls,
and shorebirds, and ducks.
They share habitat with marine
mammals, and particularly with seals.
We know that you can get spillover,
a transmission that happens
from one species to another.
Perhaps people have heard about
so-called bird flu and swine flu.
Even though we have not been
seeing signs of virus in seals,
we wonder, did that necessarily
mean there was no virus
or was it possible that virus
was circulating out there
without seeing disease?
So we went out to Muskeget Island
to see whether or not
we could detect virus.
Oh, nice.
We're gonna roll, ready?
- You wanna roll him this way?
- Yeah.
Watch that back end, there.
Nice. Okay.
He's very feisty.
Good boy.
Are you ready? Everybody's out?
- We're good.
- Yeah, you're good. Hop off.
Nice job.
Good job.
That was not an easy one.
So we went out and did
these health assessments.
We were thinking
that there could be virus,
that's why we went out and looked,
but weren't really
expecting to find a whole lot.
We were actually
pretty surprised to find that
about 10% of them,
we were able to detect influenza virus.
And that's actually a pretty high level,
even for wild bird reservoirs.
It's a very real concern,
because if you have a scenario
where a virus is circulating
in the animals,
otherwise they seem like
they're healthy and just fine,
that gives the virus the opportunity to
continue to circulate in that population.
- There, finally.
- Ready? One, two, three.
- Nice work.
- Nice job.
Even if you're just
thinking about a virus
that's circulating in a gray seal,
the gray seal doesn't live in a bubble.
It's not easy for a virus to be able
to move from one species to another,
but if you have an animal
like manatees coming up from Florida,
maybe they have never had exposure
to influenza ever as a species,
so if they come into contact
with gray seals
that are shedding out influenza,
that introduces a higher likelihood
of having that
cross-species interaction.
All of those different reassortments
that can happen in wild animals,
the training ground on
another mammalian host,
and then the opportunity for those
new variants to come into humans
that we don't have
a pre-existing immunity to,
is a sort of scenario that
leaves us incredibly susceptible
to that becoming
a pandemic situation.
It's easy to get caught up in the kind
of "Jaws"-esque angle to things,
and take our eye off the bigger picture
that really we should be thinking about,
which is that the health of one species
really does impact all of us.
The black flag is up.
Apparently,
they sighted a shark at this beach.
So the water's clear for an hour.
- For an hour?
- Yeah.
- So...
- Okay.
I just thought...
Yeah, I just found out myself. Yeah.
They know how to deal with that,
I guess.
Yeah. I guess.
You know, just be careful. Yeah.
- Thanks for telling us.
- Yep, you got it.
I think I'll just have a small dish
of twist, chocolate vanilla twist.
- Okay.
- That's all I'll have, yeah.
Hello.
I think we'd be better off if we realize
that we're one strand in the web of life
instead of thinking ourselves as
the dominant species
that can control everything.
Humankind must learn humility
in the face of nature.
If you go out in the water, you gotta
take that chance,however slim it is.
Here you go.
This is the oldie
but goodie right here.
I used to be, like, four feet tall riding
this thing, getting pushed into the wave.
Do you think you might go out today?
I would like to just because
of what the event is.
Been a big part of my childhood, so...
But I haven't surfed on Cape
since the day it happened, so...
It's one of those things where
you have to kind of weigh everything,
and I understand, so just let me know.
I mean, you don't have to paddle out.
- You don't have to do anything.
- Right.
- You just sit there and watch.
- Yeah.
You are all welcome
to the 373rd version
of the Oldtimers Classic.
It is time for us all
to ride the wild surf.
Social Security, you're up next.
Social Security, 4:00, up front.
Bring your board down.
The real Cape Cod Oldtimers here.
Give 'em a hero's welcome.
John, oh, my God.
- Yeah, I thought this was a single thing.
- I know. Sweet, guys.
And off you go!
Ride the wild surf!
All right. Here we go.
Here we go!
- John's coming in.
- He's gonna get up in a little...
He gave up...
We got another pass
of the airplane overhead.
Looking for the man in the gray suit.
I'm not sure how you can see a shark
from 400 feet.
Clementin, come on down!
Clementin, please come over!
Grab your board.
Come on. I see you hiding.
I see you hiding.
- Katie!
- Katie!
Katie!
And Alexandra!
Okay, let's hear it
for the women surfers of Cape Cod!
Dana, what'd you do? I heard you had
the first wave of the heat.
- That's why I took it.
-You did.
- Yes.
- I did? Okay.
It's the longest wave
I've ever seen you ride.
Yeah. You were rocking out there.
- I was, like, screaming for you.
- Oh, yeah.
I heard the screaming
and I'm like, "Wow."
Third place, we have
Dana Ducktape. Dana!
Second place, Alexandria K...
because I can't pronounce her
last name. There she is. Thank you.
Holy moly. Look at that.
Two of their... one of their engines
is the value of this.
We're heading to the outer harbor.
There's several hundred gray seals that,
they don't literally haul out,
but they sit on the bottom
where it's really shallow.
All these animals, it's always
just the balance between, like,
food, rest, growth, sex,
and escaping predators, so,
"Let's find that niche of the beach where
I can take a nap and not get eaten."
There's a dead humpback.
Where?
West of the southwest corner,
right out here.
Do we go?
I said, "Scott, Bryan here.
"We heard there's a dead whale.
Skomal is on the water.
"And if he had a better location,
that would help us."
It's a... you know,
it's the needle in the haystack.
Like, in your mind a dead whale
is gonna be huge.
It's actually really...
they're really hard to find.
- Look at all the petrels.
- Yeah.
So, you can see all the little bits
that's kind of broke down on the whale.
That's wonderful fat for a small seabird
like a Wilson's storm petrel.
A whale floating at the surface
like this, as it breaks down,
it's gonna provide lots of feeding
opportunities for these birds.
And these birds will migrate south.
And they're so small, so fat stores
for them. It's really important.
So a boost like this will
probably be good for this...
Look at how many there are
just trailing behind us here.
It's beautiful.
You can see how quickly this animal's
being reclaimed into the ecosystem.
It's powerful, right?
Most people don't think
about whales when they die.
Right now, it's gassed up,
but if, if they create a cavity
and the gas is released, it'll sink.
That's when it becomes whale fall
and sinks to the bottom.
And then everything
on the bottom has a meal.
There have been sharks here.
Yeah. Those definitely look like
some shark bites.
That big open area
on the top of the whale,
those are all, all bites.
- Tow boat's here.
- Yeah, tow boat's here.
That's Noah. That's Noah Santos.
He's got a shark cage right there.
Oh, my God.
He is going in that water.
- What?
- Yeah.
That is amazing.
Part of the culture of Cape Cod.
Oh, Lord.
- That's not a whale watch though.
- That's the "Ock."
That's Greg that's on that.
- Greg Skomal?
- Yeah.
- Oh, cool. So he's here.
- Yeah.
Hi Lisa. I din't even see you here.
- Oh, yeah. No worries. How's it going?
- Good.
- Something was eating it.
- Oh, yeah.
The whites will come back.
They'll be on it.
- Yeah.
- It's a matter of time.
Yeah.
So, Bryan, you see the elliptical marks
on the side here?
- Yeah.
- There's a shark fin right there.
- I just saw a shark fin.
- You just saw a shark fin?
Dorsal fin, yup.
You guys look this way.
- There was just a shark tip.
- Yeah, right in the back.
Yep. Was that a...
Was that a white or a blue?
- That's not a white.
- Okay.
- Right behind, that's a shark!
- Look at that.
- Yeah.
- That's a white shark.
White shark!
- Big one.
- Yeah.
- RV "Ock," RV "Ock."
- Yeah!
This is "Volta" on 82.
- Holy!
- Why you coming to me?
He is looking at us.
- Don't come on my...
- Tagged.
Yeah. Get the dorsal fin, Bryan.
It's big. It's really big.
Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Oh, my God.
Holy fucking shit.
Oh, my God.
Fucking shit. Get me out of this!
Oh, my God.
- It's like watching Jaws go by.
- Oh, my God, babe, you did it!
Check that off the bucket list.
Holy shit!
Oh man, I was in the cage
when she went by. It was amazing.
I bet.
Big one?
Yeah, it was the biggest one
I've ever seen.
They're just as scary under water
as they are everywhere else.
The ecosystem
provides balance and stability
if we'll just give it
balance and stability.
Those of us who live here
see little snapshots.
As this ecosystem changes,
the snapshots become more telling.
One can imagine that Native Americans,
who lived on these shores,
probably saw little difference
in the coming and going of fish
and birds, and whales,
probably for millennia.
Now in a lifetime
we're seeing those differences.
My grandfather said that
when my ancestors came here,
there was an abundance of fish
such that
in this very location,
right in the harbor,
they fished with big wicker baskets.
It was a time of balance.
And this ecosystem right now
one feels, I certainly feel,
is in a state where
it's trying to find the balance.
But human activities
have imbalanced the system.
Finding that balance,
and finding how humans can live
with that balance is not easy.
- Really looks pretty today.
- Yeah.
- Did you see the whale?
- No, I didn't. Did you?
Yeah. Your mother, when she went down
and said there's a whale coming.
- I saw the spout.
- Oh, nice.
We're going up because
we're gonna pull the chair up.
You're pulling the chair up too?
All right.
- Yep.
- I don't know if there's any space.
That's all right.
We'll figure it out. Thanks.
The lifeguards are taking up their chairs,
so there's no more lifeguards.
Yeah, if there's a shark out there,
you won't know
unless you happen to see the fin.
Up, up, up, up, up!
When my parents bought
a piece of land in Wellfleet,
there were no houses,
it was all woods.
In those days, you felt
you'd reached an outpost.
The land was wild
and uncontaminated.
Only by a thumbnail is
the Cape still a wild place.
You know, it's this tiny
little vest pocket park.
Too many people use it.
It's just holding on,
just holding on for its ecological life.
I mean, I'm a little worried, because,
like, we're still in peak shark season
and people are still going
to be coming to the beach.
I mean, some of us will be around.
So, we'll keep an eye out,
like, unofficially.
We'll definitely be looking for sharks
'cause we can never turn it off,
and we can never stop lifeguarding.
Hopefully people will pay attention.
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