First Great White Shark of 2015 Tagged Off Chatham

Courtesy: Atlantic White Shark Conservancy First great white shark of 2015 tagged off Chatham

COURTESY ATLANTIC WHITE SHARK CONSERVANCY
First great white shark of 2015 tagged off Chatham.

CHATHAM – The shark tagging season is officially underway.

State shark expert Dr. Greg Skomal tagged the first great white shark of the year Monday off the coast of Chatham.

This is the second year of a major shark research study being conducted with the Atlantic White Shark Conservancy.

In the first year of the study, Skomal tagged 68 great white sharks in waters off Chatham and Orleans in weekly trips made mid-June through October 2014.

In year two of the study this year, Skomal said they will be able to see if any of the sharks spotted last year return to the region’s waters.

Skomal previously said he will be headed out twice a week this summer in research trips sponsored by the nonprofit set up to aid in funding for the research.

“We’re going to get out there and try to, based on last year’s and this year’s work and even next year’s work, be able to give folks living on Cape Cod and those visiting here a sense of the population size of white sharks that are visiting,” Skomal said of the study.

The study in Cape Cod waters is the first major research done on great white sharks on the eastern seaboard.

“The goal is to find as many white sharks as possible and for the population study to get as much footage of the sharks as we can,” said Atlantic White Shark Conservancy President Cynthia Wigren.

Last year, scientists started to catalogue the sharks and Wigren said it will be interesting to see this year which sharks, identifiable by their markings, will be spotted again.



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