Sharks: Adjusting to a 'New Normal' on the South Fork

A Fourth of July shark bite at Quogue Village Beach and temporary swimming bans on the South Fork have thrust the ocean-dweller into the spotlight, just as rising temperatures have pushed tourists and locals alike to the water, seeking refuge from the heat.

While the recent events may have many bathers nervous about going into the ocean, Frank Quevedo, director of the South Fork Natural History Museum and its Shark Research and Education Program, wants to make sure people understand the true nature of the incidents.

“They’re not attacks,” he said. “People would be dying, limbs would be severed. A shark attack is when a shark actually targets a human being for consumption purposes — and this is not happening.”

At Quogue Village Beach, on the Fourth of July, a 47-year-old man, while swimming in chest-deep water, was bitten by what Quogue Village Police said was a shark. In Southampton Village, beaches were temporarily closed last Friday and Saturday in response to a feared shark presence.

Quevedo ties the shark sightings to two almost contradictory factors: water quality improvements that have positively impacted marine life, and the negative effects of climate change.

“It’s not that there are more sharks and more whales and more dolphins in the water,” Quevedo said. “It’s just that they’re coming closer to shore.”

Marine animals, including sharks, he noted, are following the food and moving in toward the beach — schools of fish the sharks feed on, like bunker, have rebounded in recent years due to environmental improvements.

“The main food source for all these animals is the Atlantic menhaden bunker,” he said. “In 2019, the then-governor of New York, Andrew Cuomo, signed a bill to protect bunker from being harvested through a method called purse seining.” Purse seining is a fishing method in which nets stretch across the entirety of the water column, and can stretch up to six blocks wide, according to Quevedo.

In recent years, the bunker populations have increased dramatically, he said, and, with them, their predators’ numbers. “That kind of eliminated commercial fishing fleets taking everything out of the water in one shot,” Quevedo said. “The bunker are now coming closer to the shore.”

Greg Metzger, a marine science teacher at Southampton High School and a collaborator in the Shark Research and Education Program, agrees that food sources can be the main arbiter of sharks’ whereabouts.

“I know last year, some of the negative interactions were happening because the people were literally in or very close to the edge of schools of fish,” Metzger said, noting that swimmers should leave the water if they encounter large numbers of fish.

Speaking more broadly, though, he thinks the increase in shark incidents is just due to more people being in the water.

“The other factor is that it’s literally a numbers game,” said Metzger. “My feeling is that there are more people in the water this year, this early, compared to the same time last year.”

Regarding the bites, Quevedo explains, they’re purely accidental.

“A shark is not like a human,” he said. “When we’re hungry, we can open up the fridge and pick what we want. Sharks can’t do that. The only way sharks can find food is by finding a school of fish and then just blasting into them and hoping their teeth can catch something.”

The incident in Quogue, he says, demonstrates that idea. “If that shark wanted to rip that guy’s leg off, it would have been long gone,” Quevedo said, hypothesizing that the culprit was a sand tiger shark just looking for its lunch.

Moving closer to shore is not the only behavioral change sharks have displayed in recent years.

“Warming waters are allowing exotic sharks to be more prominent out here during the summer months,” he said, noting that in the past, they wouldn’t be found this far north. “So now we’re seeing spinner sharks and black tip sharks, and, if you go farther offshore near the Gulf Stream, you’ll come across some tiger sharks and perhaps bull sharks.”

At the beaches, precautionary measures have been taken by local officials to keep swimmers safe.

Matt Weeks, the beach manager at Coopers Beach in the Village of Southampton, says the municipality has taken a “triactionary” response to the shark presence — a three-pronged approach to dealing with the problem.

“The first part,” he said, “is our lifeguards observe the water, with two on the stand at all times. The second is having an aerial drone view of the swimming area. And the third is rescue watercraft.”

Village Police also moved quickly in response to the incidents on the Fourth, putting drones into service on July 7.

Quevedo questions whether drones are solid indicators of the presence of sharks, noting that the fish “spends less than 10 percent of its time at the surface of the water.” However, he acknowledges that the drones can look for other signs, such as schools of bunker or other prey fish, which attract hungry sharks.

Already, the information provided by the drones has proven useful.

On July 7 and 8, “We stopped swimming because of marine life visible from the drone to be extra cautious,” Weeks said. “There’s no harm in getting people out of the water and letting the bunker go through.”

The precautionary measures of taking people out of the water in the presence of schools of fish, the experts agreed, is an excellent way to reduce interaction between sharks and humans.

To the east, beach monitoring drones have been used for three years, according to John Ryan, the chief lifeguard for the Town of East Hampton. While the drones have been important in monitoring the water for sharks, Ryan states they have been crucial in other contexts as well.

“We’re more concerned about bluefish,” he said, of the large, aggressive fish that travels in schools and occasionally attacks swimmers. “They just like to eat, eat, eat, eat, eat.”

Ryan noted that the sharks, though, remain a concern for the lifeguards this summer. “We’re all on heightened alert,” he said.

They might not go away anytime soon, though. The presence of sharks might just be a constant in future summers, said Metzger.

“This is something that New York beachgoers need to be aware of — a new normal,” he said. “They need to educate themselves on how to interact with a more conserved ocean, and that this is going to be something that’s commonplace.”

Ryan, Weeks, Metzger and Quevedo all agreed that swimmers should understand that there are inherent dangers to swimming in the ocean.

“If you jump in the ocean, you’re pretty much becoming part of the food chain of the marine environment,” Quevedo said.

Considering the risks, though, there are still some things swimmers can do to stay safe. “Make sure to swim on protected beaches,” Ryan said. “Lifeguards can make sure the beach is safe.”

Quevedo offered that swimmers should avoid the water during corpuscular times, or dawn and dusk. “Sharks will utilize the lack of daylight in order to catch their prey,” he said.

Jewelry is a no-go, too, because it “creates a sparkle that looks like another fish,” said Quevedo.

If you see fish, birds, or dolphins in the water, you should probably get out, Weeks noted. “If there’s a lot of marine life, make sure to exit the water,” he said.

Overall, though, the presence of a healthy marine ecosystem, they agreed, should not prevent anyone from enjoying the beach. “We want people to have fun, just safely,” said Weeks. “That’s our job.”

Metzger added that sharks are not really as prevalent as they may seem.

“The opportunities for negative interactions between sharks and swimmers is probably in the millions, and so far, five of those millions of opportunities went bad,” he said. “The chances of having a negative interaction with a shark is literally almost zero.”