There is no scenario that brings up more dread for inshore fishermen than finding oneself in the water, looking back and seeing a fin rapidly closing in. Whether you fish from a boat, kayak or from the surf, every angler has imagined this moment and then considered the staggering odds and found the courage to get back to fishing. Over the past decade, an increasing number of surfcasters have hung the wetsuit up for good, citing an increase in shark numbers throughout the range of the striped bass as making deep wades and swims to offshore rocks too dangerous.
In a 2021 article here in The Fisherman, New England editor Dave Anderson interviewed two shark experts about the supposed increase in sharks along our coast, the potential dangers posed by sharks and how to steer clear of high-risk areas. On the subject of the supposed increase in sharks along our coast, Executive Director of the Atlantic Shark Institute Jon Dodd said, “Technology has come a long way with regard to determining the presence of these sharks. This means we know when tagged great whites swim through our waters and the public is made aware of this any number of ways. Even as recently as just a few years ago, there were no acoustic receivers at Block Island, now there are nine and they’re picking up on known sharks moving through the area. This has led the general public to conclude, ‘now they’re at Block Island!’ But these sharks can live to be 70 years old, they were probably always there and the remote likelihood of being attacked has, almost certainly, not changed.”
On the subject of potential dangers Dodd added, “The sharks we document swimming by the acoustic receivers off of Block Island and Montauk are typically gone in a day. They’re all headed to Cape Cod. These sharks are not dumb, they set up in the shallows off these beaches on the Cape and they know those seals have two choices; they can stay on the beach and starve or they can get in the water and swim out to their fishing grounds.” And as far as steering clear of high-risk areas, MA Shark Biologist John Chisholm, a lifelong striper fisherman, said, “They’re looking for that deep edge feeding advantage, just like striped bass. If you’re swimming on those deep edges near these known [seal] haul-out areas, you’re putting yourself at a much greater risk.”
With all that said, the World Animal Foundation says that your risk of being attacked by a shark has dropped by nearly 20%! Davin Trent from the World Animal Foundation said, “We noticed that some of your articles reference an outdated stat, saying that the chances of being attacked by shark are 1 in 3.7 million. However, based on our most recent data, these figures have been updated, and we now calculate that there is a 1 in 4,332,817 chance of any swimmer suffering a shark attack.” It’s hard fathom the chances being that exact – down to the ones place – but, for anyone that fishes with that creeping fear in the back of their mind, this increase of %17.103162162 should help put some of these fears to rest.
