The Atlantic White Shark Conservancy completed their research season for 2023, announcing they successfully tagged 34 white sharks off Cape Cod from July through late October.
304 individual sharks have been tagged off the coast of Cape Cod since the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries began its tagging program.
Members of the Atlantic White Shark Conservancy attended the White Sharks Global conference in Port Lincoln, Australia to show their findings.
“The conference provided a valuable opportunity to share information with the international white shark science community about ongoing research and education programs and learn from scientists working at other white shark hotspots around the world,” said Winton. “The last white shark focused conference was held in 2010, just as Cape Cod was emerging as a new hotspot.”
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About 800 white sharks swam through the Cape Cod area from 2015 to 2018, according to the research published in the journal Marine Ecology Progress Series. It used a first-of-its-kind population survey for white sharks, known to the general public as great white sharks, in the North Atlantic Ocean.
This does not mean that there are 800 white sharks off the coast of Massachusetts at any one time — they can stay anywhere from a few hours to weeks as they hunt seals.
"It's only a small segment of the population but previously we knew nothing about numbers of white sharks here in this part of the world," said Greg Skomal to NBC10 Boston in a previous interview.
