In search of sharks: LI tries drones, extra lifeguards, patrols

On Cape Cod, researchers tag sharks and provide real-time alerts on a smartphone app.

In Southern California, crews staff pop-up tents called "Shark Shacks" on beaches to advise swimmers about staying shark-safe. 

In parts of Australia, governments string miles-long nets off beaches to prevent sharks from coming close to shore.

On Long Island, where researchers say this summer's increase in shark activity could be signaling a new normal, officials are deploying drones that provide a bird's-eye view of the water, adding extra lifeguards and sending out teams on personal watercraft and boats to spot the predators.

Shark experts say all of these strategies have their pluses and minuses, not to mention some hefty price tags. But they stress that the best safety tool is educating beachgoers on shark-smart etiquette: Don't swim without a lifeguard on duty; don't swim at dawn or dusk; and don't swim in areas with signs of predatory feeding, such as roiling waters or seabirds diving down into the surf.

"We can't change shark behavior, but we can change our behavior," said Chris Lowe, director of the Shark Lab at California State University, Long Beach. "These tips help decrease people's fear of sharks. People have been programmed to think that if a shark is near them in the water, it will bite. But that's basically not true."

Long Island officials have stepped up efforts to spot sharks, following six bites and numerous sightings this summer. None of the bites were life-threatening, officials said. The most recent bite victim was a teen surfer bitten at Kismet Beach on Fire Island on July 20, just hours after a small dead white shark washed up on shore in Quogue.

Gov. Kathy Hochul has directed state parks and police to expand shark patrols here. The state is enhancing media outreach and messaging on social media. The state Department of Environmental Conservation maintains a Coastal Sharks webpage.

Patrolling off Jones Beach, Robert Moses

A Newsday crew joined Lt. Sean Reilly, a Department of Environmental Conservation supervising officer, on the waters off Jones Beach and Robert Moses State Park last week. As the boat rocked to the gentle swells, Reilly noted that their usual duty of catching anglers who break fishing laws has expanded to include searching for sharks.

Reilly and his team spent a week looking but had yet to spot a shark, he said. The boat patrols 400 to 800 yards offshore, covering areas that lifeguards can’t see. But the water is murky and sharks don’t surface that often, he said.

“In a few hours, what are the chances of coming across something in an area that’s going to be like 30 square miles?” Reilly said.

Meanwhile, state park officials say they see the anxiety among Long Island beachgoers.

“People are still coming to the beaches, but they’re just dipping their toes in the water, not necessarily going out and swimming,” said George Gorman, regional director for the state Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation.

Drone technology has revolutionized shark detection, as the machines can move swiftly across wide swaths of ocean, said Lowe, of California's Shark Lab.

The Shark Lab is finishing a two-year study that had eight drones flying about five days a week over 80 miles of coastline in Southern California, he said.

"The data suggests that sharks treat humans as though they were flotsam — just stuff floating on the surface — which they tend to ignore," Lowe said.

The Shark Lab also has "Shark Shacks" on Southern California beaches to spread the latest information about sharks so people can make better decisions in the water, he said.

The lab has a system of 100 underwater receivers that pick up signals from tagged sharks, but those receivers must be lifted from the water to download the data, Lowe said. Each receiver costs about $2,000, and they help track the movement of sharks, where they hang out, and what kind of sharks have been in the area, he said.

Starting about three years ago, the lab began deploying buoys that pick up tagged sharks in real time, whenever a shark comes within 300 yards. The signal is sent to lifeguards, who can make a decision on the danger and, if need be, close swimming on a beach, he said. But the lab only has six of these buoys out there, as each costs $20,000, he said.

"We don't think of them as safety alerts, but as tools to help the lifeguards understand shark behavior," Lowe said, noting the data is not available to the public.

Shark attacks remain rare in California, despite the state's reputation for harboring white sharks. California has had 132 confirmed shark attacks since 1837, but averages relatively low numbers annually, according to the International Shark Attack File, a global database on attacks. Last year, the state had three attacks, one fatal, the file said.

Increase in white sharks

Just as Long Island has seen an increase in sharks due to the resurgence of bunker fish here, New England is seeing an increase in sharks, particularly white sharks, as the area's seal populations rebound, said John Chisholm, adjunct scientist at the New England Aquarium in Boston. Several beaches have been closed this summer due to the increased sightings, he said.

Dozens of great white sharks have been spotted off Cape Cod recently, according to the Atlantic White Shark Conservancy’s Sharktivity app. The app provides various types of alerts regarding shark sightings. The sightings are input by researchers, safety officials and users that upload photos. Some sightings are posted right away, some within hours, and others within days, he said.

The app's real-time shark alerts come from a handful of buoys off Cape Cod that signal authorities and lifeguards to the presence of tagged white sharks, Chisholm said. These people then provide real-time push notifications to people's smartphones, Chisholm said. 

For example, an almost immediate alert was issued on the Sharktivity app for 3:19 p.m. Friday, saying, "White shark spotted by pilot 100 yards off of Pochet beach, south of Nauset public beach, moving south."

Bryan Legare, program manager for the shark ecology program at the Center for Coastal Studies in Provincetown, Massachusetts, cited limitations to these real-time detectors as an early warning system.

"They are only hitting a fraction of the sharks out there," he said, noting that the devices only pick up tagged sharks. "You would have to tag hundreds of thousands of sharks in general. … Then it would be pinging all the time."

Legare said there is a constant push from the public to make the beaches safer.

"We haven't had any incidents this year — knock wood," he said.

Massachusetts has had six confirmed shark attacks since 1837, according to the International Shark Attack File.

Working with state crews, the coastal studies center has tagged about 300 white sharks over the past decade, he said. The devices are removed once a year, around Labor Day, and the data is downloaded, he said.

"We don't get the data until we remove them from the ocean," Legare said.

No shark tracker app on LI

Long Island, for its part, has no shark tracker app, said Greg Metzger, the chief field coordinator for the South Fork Natural History Museum, Shark Research and Education Program.

Metzger said he believes this summer's escalation of shark activity may well be the reality for a long time.

"I don't see any reason why not. This is the way the ocean should be. The shark population and food are moving back to where Mother Nature had intended, until we showed up," he said.

Metzger is captain of a team that heads out on the water several days a week during the summer to tag sharks. They've tagged more than 200 sharks, including about 50 so far this year, he said.

Various kinds of shark tags are employed, he said, including an acoustic tag about half the size of a cigar that is inserted into the body cavity of a shark. It emits a unique vibration in the water. Underwater receivers store information that identify the particular shark, the time and date, the depth of the shark. The receivers are pulled from the water and analyzed every few months, he said.

For Long Island, live alerts could be a component of a system that makes beaches safer, Metzger said. But so many more sharks would need to be tagged, and even then, the tags would be alerting quite often given the number of sharks in these waters.

Metzger does not favor stringing nets across beach waters to block sharks, as is done in parts of Australia. These nets, he said, have spurred numerous protests from animal activists and conservationists, as they entangle and kill not only sharks but whales, dolphins and sea turtles. They also tear easily during storms, he said.

The hope, Metzger said, is that down the line a variety of tools can gather enough information to produce "shark forecasts," which tell Long Islanders when numerous sharks are around — which beach, what time of day, he said. Such forecasting is, at best, years away, he said.

The sharks spotted off Long Island tend to be small ones — mostly sand-tiger sharks, sandbar sharks and dusky sharks — which experts say are probably mistaking humans for fish. These sharks don't have the teeth or jaws to eat a person, they say.

At this time, New York State does not plan to attempt other methods of protecting people from sharks, such as placing fences in the ocean to create a protective area where the fish can’t enter, Gorman said.

New York has had 12 confirmed shark attacks since 1837, according to the shark file. That figure does not include this summer's shark bites, which file officials say are still under review. Florida has had the most in the United States, with 895 confirmed attacks in that time, the file said.

Despite the concerns on Long Island, one Florida city, New Smyrna Beach, has all but embraced its reputation as the "Shark Bite Capital of the World," said Tammy Malphurs, a deputy chief of Volusia County Beach Safety Ocean Rescue.

Shark bites "are a minor issue for us," Malphurs said, noting that the area receives 12 million visitors a year. The county uses drones and personal watercraft, as well as 24-hour patrols on the water, she said. Most years, the crews that work 47 miles of beach handle five to eight shark bites, "almost all non-life-threatening, pretty minor," she said. 

New Smyrna Beach businesses employ the place's moniker in tourism marketing, she said.

"They have a Shark Bite Half Marathon. The bars have shark bite drinks. You can buy T-shirts that say it," Malphurs said.