State of Seal Overpopulation & Great White Resurgence in New England

was SharkHunter right all along??

 

In the last 5 years every surfer I know on Cape has a shark story. Spotter plane and shark tagging boats cruising by all the time just to keep it on your mind. One guy was out and didn't see the seal get hit on the shore side of the sandbar he was surfing and when the people on the beach went crazy he actually paddled through the blood slick on his way to shore and came out greasy.

My story is a little weaker but still creepy was out at Coast Guard early fall, no more lifeguards, and the wave south of the peak I was on was much better but had ten SUPs on it so was fine on the lesser one. Eventually all 10 SUPs get out at the same time, and I actually think to myself "oh must be a class or something, sweet, the nice peak is all mine" and paddle south the 200 yards or so. I surf for the next half an hour alone when one of the SUP guys paddles back out and tell me I'm crazy. I asked what he was talking about and he said a shark cruised right through the pack of them heading north and when they got out I was paddling straight towards it. Shark and i had to have passed within 50 feet of each other in deeper water between the sandbars. Still gives me chills thinking about it and still can't get over how dumb it was to think it was a SUP class, it's all sharks all the time here and I still didn't think of it, idiot.

Someone will get bit and soon, attacks happen around the world where lots of people and lots of sharks share the same ocean and that's the situation here now. You can't cull the seals though they are protected even more than an animal on the endangered species act. That one has a means to remove the species but the marine mammal protection act has no such clause. Not sure what we do other than eventually do what south Africa does with nets and spotters? Who knows but it's getting worse every summer.

 

tube turkey, are you saying we start culling seals and sharks? seriously? there are sharks in the ocean. deal with it or stay home.

 

hayzeus effing keerist, it's the friggin ocean, ladies, and when you enter the ocean you're no longer at the top of the food chain (HST). This isn't news.

We're also obviously not on the menu. If we were on the menu then there would be dozens of attacks by now. Esp on goobers who paddle into sharkiness. So, undo your twisted knickers, be a bit smarter out there & yah, expect to see sharks, dolphins, turtles, whales, crocs, sea snakes, 'rays, jellies & maybe even the faaaaarking Loch Ness Monster, too.

Or, just stay home & play with your Legos.

 

I think I would be more worried if they ran out of seals to eat, then they'd have to start looking at other sources of food, which could lead them to you by accident, and they don't want us, we can't taste very good, i'm sure those seals are very tasty.

 

^^^^Remember where ya heard it first, that's when I've been saying you'll see the first encounter, once they reduce the number of seals. Enough seal to feed shark no problemme.

 

Nature

 

[video=youtube;Xq6geS00S7c]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xq6geS00S7c[/video]

 

They tell all swimmers and surfers to avoid seals but I think that's the worst advice. Seals are my "canary in the coal mine" in a sense. When they are acting calm and normal, I'm not worried. Last summer when 5 shot up on the sand of a beach crowded with tourists, you new there was something else in the water and it was time to take a break.

No one here has stopped surfing altogether because of it but it is a unique situation. There is no established ecology to have studied here because every culture from native American to vikings to us has decimated the seals creating no reason for the sharks to be here. Now they are coming back and the unkown is the only real problem.

 

I have a ton of respect for you guys up there, I know my head would be on a swivel. My boy was just up there, said he saw one swim right under him, chasing a seal.

Also said he saw a pod of Orcas??? Can you corroborate that?

 

Yeah, a fisherman took photos of an Orca, just the one, they even knew his name from fin markings, off Cape about a month ago. It's another example of the changing ecology off our shores, its amazing really. The issue is we do have an overpopulation of seals because we don't have enough natural predation, as evidenced by sharks and apparently orcas returning to the local waters. Will and do the seals decimate fish stocks, screwing other populations? Do we, or have we, become one of the sharkiest places on the planet, and does it only get worse.

Fascinating stuff when you are an ocean enthusiast of any kind.

 

For reals, very interesting. Also heard of some beach closures due to a bunch of whiteys feeding off a humpback carcass. Just seems like sh!t is truly getting more wild out there.

 

https://www.boston.com/news/local-n...e-video-shark-snacking-whale-carcass-off-cape

The wind eventually pushed the carcass so close to shore you could watch them ripping chunks off from the beach.

 

Good! Bring the kids to watch Mother Nature & the planet as it should be. Instead, the human virals were likely screaming about what a threat this was to swimmers - - and hen taking their kids to a zoo to watch a lion eat a pile of hamburger.

SMH

 

No, not really. They closed the beaches and everyone that could watched it and appreciated the spectacle. Like I said, we surf smarter up here but we are not surfing scared and we understand the nature of the element we are playing in.

Why are you "SMH"ing?

 

So overblown. People surf all day everyday from Santa Barbara north to Point Reyes in CA and sure, some people get bit occasionally. Two guys died at Surf Beach in the past few years but that is an outlier. But we're supposed to panic of the whites here now?

Feel bad for the fishermen of this generation sure, but it was their dads and granddads who f_cked them over, not the seals.

 

codfish you take everything personally, bucko. I don't have time to explain every post to you but I'll make an exception here.
If you read my post it's pretty clear why: people bark about a dead whale & the shark = food chain yet they take the kiddies for a 'fun day' at the zoo to view Nature totally subverted by the human virus.

 

#qft

#9/12