Sharks in Long Island waters this summer? Yes, expect they'll be swimming near you, experts say

If you're in the water off Long Island this summer, there's probably a shark nearby.

"I knew there were sharks around, but when I started my research here ... my mind was blown," said Craig O’Connell, director and founder of O’Seas Conservation Foundation, a Montauk-based nonprofit that integrates shark conservation efforts with youth education programs,

How many? "I’m a scientist. If I gave you a specific number I’d be lying. ... But, a lot," O'Connell said.

Earlier this week, Southampton photographer Joanna L. Steidle, a drone pilot, artist and owner of Hamptons Done Art, captured aerial footage of a large great white shark, possibly pregnant, swimming in the Atlantic Ocean just a few hundred feet off the beach in Montauk. Steidle, whose work has been featured on Nat Geo, said it was one of her earliest seasonal shark sightings — and the fourth time she’s recorded a great white off Long Island.

"Last year, there was very little baitfish here, so I didn’t see a lot of sharks," Steidle said. "I saw schools of striped bass right in the breakers and there was calm water, good sun, and all of a sudden the great white came into my frame. She’d been deep down. And literally, she was probably just 200 feet from shore.

"I couldn’t believe it. I was like, man, it doesn’t get any better than this."

The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation notes the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's fisheries division has been managing the U.S. shark fishery in federal waters since 1993. The DEC said regulations regarding environmental protections and catch limits and bans had helped many species of baitfish as well as sharks make comebacks in recent years. There are more than two dozen shark species in the waters off Long Island, some seasonal, others year-round.

When it comes to great white sharks, the villain in the 1975 Stephen Spielberg classic, "Jaws," the DEC said the sharks used Long Island waters as a "nursery habitat throughout the warm season."

Many great whites, marine researchers such as O’Connell said, appear to stop off Long Island during seasonal migrations from warm winter ocean homes off Florida and South Carolina. They're en route to summer hunting grounds off Cape Cod and Nova Scotia, where they feast on bountiful schools of baitfish and seals. "Everything is interconnected," O’Connell said. "Cleaner waters, more prey. That leads to more predators."

NOAA Fisheries says humans are not part of any shark species’ normal diet, though the Florida Museum of Natural History reports between 40 and 60 unprovoked shark attacks each year worldwide. There were 69 such attacks reported in 2023, and 47 in 2024. In the United States, there are about 20 to 30 unprovoked attacks each year.

The lone shark bite reported last season on Long Island was that of a fisherman bitten near the Island Park fishing pier in September. In 2023, Newsday reported five people were attacked on Long Island beaches — another off Rockaway Beach in Queens. Officials said three shark sightings closed Town of Hempstead beaches in August, and Newsday reported there were as many as nine shark sightings at beaches Islandwide in 2023.

The O’Seas Foundation, based out of the Montauk Anglers Club, runs eight five-day hands-on summer camps, called Shark Camp, for high school and college-age students from around the world. Now in its eighth season, O’Seas' Research Week sessions involve four separate weeks of camps for boys and four for girls, with five daily sessions during which students are taken onto the water to help catch, tag and release sharks.

This year’s classes will include students from Long Island, as well as from Brazil, Canada, Italy, Indonesia and other U.S. states.

Although O’Seas research and study involve many varieties of marine life, great white sharks are of particular interest.

In fact, on its website, NOAA Fisheries admits: "Despite its notorious reputation, little is known about the Northwest Atlantic population of white sharks in comparison to other white shark populations around the world."

It’s truly amazing in the summertime how many sharks are out there.

— Craig O’Connell, director and founder of O’Seas Conservation Foundation

Credit: Danielle Silverman

"It’s truly amazing in the summertime how many sharks are out there," O’Connell said, noting varieties include species that are potential threats to humans, among them bull, tiger and great white sharks.

"It’s not something I’m saying to make people panic and say, you know, don’t ever go in the water anymore," he said. "You’ve been swimming with these sharks for a very long time. You just never realized it."

What should you do to keep safe this summer? NOAA offered these guidelines: Avoid going into ocean waters at dawn and dusk, the most active times for sharks; stay close to shore; swim in groups; and avoid areas with sandbars and steep drop-offs.

As O'Connell said: "Exercise some caution. A lot of sharks that we encounter are very close to shore — within 100 to 200 yards, especially in summer when we get what we call the fuel of the New York bight ... the menhaden, the bunker, those giant schools of fish.

"Those [baitfish] hug the shoreline and the sharks are feeding directly on that," he said.  

If you see a bunch of bait in the water?

 "Get out," O'Connell said.

By John Valenti

john.valenti@newsday.com

John Valenti, a reporter at Newsday since 1981, has been honored nationally by the Associated Press and Society of the Silurians for investigative, enterprise and breaking news reporting, as well as column writing, and is the author of “Swee'pea,” a book about former New York playground basketball star Lloyd Daniels. Valenti is featured in the Emmy Award-winning ESPN 30-for-30 film “Big Shot.”