HYANNIS – Researchers have cataloged even more sharks in Cape and Islands waters as the marine animals return to their natural habitat after populations were driven out by human activity before the turn of the century.
Almost 100 new great white sharks have been added to local catalogs by the Atlantic White Shark Conservancy, totaling over 700 sharks in the last ten years.
Residents and visitors can browse the policy accessible catalog online. New names on the list include the recently tagged 14-foot white shark “LeeBeth.”
“Individual white sharks travel thousands of miles along the eastern coast of the United States and Canada over the course of the year. Thanks to the work of our team, our collaborators, and the fishermen, divers, and boaters who provided videos or images of white sharks, we identified 91 new individuals in 2023,” said Megan Winton, AWSC Senior Scientist. “We’ve been able to grow the Catalog to over 700 individual white sharks documented in the Northwest Atlantic, making it one of the largest photo-ID databases of individual white sharks worldwide.”
Some of the new I.D.s are attributed to citizen scientists who documented sharks via video while out fishing or boating. Officials with both the Center for Coastal Studies and New England Aquarium have said that crowd-sourced data has become more and more integral to researchers in recent years.
The Atlantic White Shark Conservancy’s catalog can be found here.
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