# United States & Canada Vacations Forums > Nantucket, Martha's Vineyard, Cape Cod Travel Forum >  >  Great White washed up on shore....

## MIke R

as the saga continues to develop

http://bostonglobe.com/metro/2012/09...R7O/story.html

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## andynap

1 down.

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## MIke R

wrong one down..we need more to eat seals!!!

it was wild leaving the Cape today....with many of the mid Cape ocean beaches closed, the traffic to go out to the outer Cape beaches was beyond bad

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## andynap

I didn't think you wanted the Whites- bad for business.

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## MIke R

nah....people are stupid and crazy...they come  to SEE the sharks.....Cape Cod shark T Shirts are selling like crazy and are everywhere..I even saw one tonight up here in NH at the restaurant....

seals are eating all our fish.....the herd is in dire need  of culling...and seeing we can no longer hunt them...we need Jaws to do it for us

we  need more of this..filmed off Chatham last week:

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## fins85258

olololo

Don't get me wrong ........ but they wouldn't need culling if every Tom, Dick & Harry weren't out there trying to catch every fish in the ocean. Those creatures of nature have been out there keeping the ecological balance a lot longer than commercial fish has been doing it.

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## MIke R

boy oh boy do you have that wrong.....in case you ve been living under a rock, "every Tom, Dick and Harry" is mostly no longer fishing...they ve been put out of business by National Marine Fisheries regulations...for many years now.....and it was OUR overreaction to a  naturally diminishing seal population and subsequent  law enforced protection of seals to begin with, which shook up the ecological balance...like it or not we are part of the food chain, predator/prey cycle who plays a part in keeping an ecological balance, and when you take us out of the formula, that is when it all starts....

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## MIke R

here is one of HUNDREDS of media releases I can provide you of government buffoonery in its fisheries management policy:

this is what happens when the monkeys run the zoo

September 12, 2012
Patrick, other governors, seek fishing aid

By Richard Gaines Staff Writer

Nearly 10 months after Gov. Deval Patrick filed socio-economic studies to show the federal government the groundfishery was in calamitous decline  caused in part by one of its own agencys policies  he and three other New England governors announced Wednesday they are asking Congress for $100 million in aid for the industry.

The written request from Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire and Rhode Island was made explicitly contingent on the U.S. Commerce Departments acknowledgement that the fishery over which it has presided for nearly four years has devolved into a state of economic disaster  something the Obama administration has refrained from doing.

The catch share program for the groundfishery a system that encourages buying selling and trading of fishermens quota or catch shares as financial commodities  was the brainchild of NOAA Administrator Jane Lubchenco. Her initial act after taking office was to pressure federal fisheries regulators to approve the re-engineering of the groundfishery without delay.

But NOAAs own statistics show that the system has driven more and more quota into the hands of larger boats and corporations, with smaller, independent boats forced to the sidelines; in the first year of catch shares, Gloucesters fleet alone lost 21 of its then-96 groundfishing boats, and the jobs they provided.

In his original filing last Nov. 15, Gov. Patrick explicitly faulted the catch share system for making a bad situation worse. The downward spiral was triggered by two decades of conservation and ever-smaller government-mandated catch limits to meet to congressional mandates, and has accelerated by a series of government assessments this year leading to even tighter cuts in catch limits, notably for Gulf of Maine cod.

Since Gov. Patricks initial filing, however, and despite the industrys fading future, the Commerce Department has not responded even to acknowledge receipt of the multiple letters, including one sent recently by the New York delegation.

Pressure has been applied on the Commerce Department and Lubchenco from many directions; before Labor Day, Sen. John Kerry circulated a draft letter to the regions congressional delegation with fishing ports and the ocean states senators which roughed out a $100 million congressional funding request that could be appended to a spending bill at the 11th hour. The most likely vehicle to carry the fisheries disaster appropriation is a farm aid bill which exists in very different forms in the Democratically controlled Senate and Republican House.

The letter released Wednesday by Patricks office which was also signed by Govs. Paul LePage of Maine, John Lynch of New Hampshire and Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island, differed in one important way from the substance of the draft letter out of Kerrys office.

Kerrys draft proposal had discussed funding of $10 million to cover defaults from a $100 million loan to capitalize a $100 million industry-funded buyback, along with the $100 million bailout in the form of investment to reduce the cost of operations for the fishery, now reorganized into a commodity market with the total allowable catch, which is certain to be much smaller next year, allocated as catch shares to members of fishing cooperatives known as sectors.

The latest version of the Kerry letter, however, no longer includes a buyback, sources who have read the letter told the Times. Andm dated last Friday, the governors letter makes no mention of a buyback, either. But it discusses using the $100 million to offset new obligations indigenous to the catch share system introduced in May 2010, temporary financial relief.

The industry is facing cutbacks in catch limits from for 43 to 75 percent next year, based on widely disputed updates of stock assessments.

The governors emphasized the need for investing in NOAA science.

A portion of the requested funds will be used for cooperative research focused on improving assessments and the system of data collection for the fishery, they wrote. The severity of the potential consequences of inaccurate or uncertain science demand that all steps are taken to ensure that the data used to set catch limits is as robust as possible.

With the livelihood of our fishing communities at stake, the governors added, continued improvement of fisheries science remains a top priority.

Marni Goldberg, press secretary at the Commerce Department, said, The department is actively working on these requests.

Introducing a fisheries disaster funding bill this late in a session overshadowed by the presidential and congressional elections, however, makes for an iffy outcome, congressional and State House sources agreed Wednesday. The same sources said belated action from Commerce could come as soon as today.

BloombergBusinessWeek reported Wednesday that the Senate, which passed a five-year farm bill in June, is aiming to adjourn at the end of next week and return after the Nov. 6 election, according to deputy Democratic leader Dick Durbin of Illinois.

In the House, Republican leaders are reluctant to vote on a five-year bill before the law expires Sept. 30. A one- year measure being considered by House Republicans is unacceptable, Senate Agriculture Committee Chairwoman Debbie Stabenow of Michigan said yesterday, BloomberrgBusinessWeek added.

Subsidies to agriculture for the next 10 years, which had been passed by the Senate and approved by the House Agriculture Committee, have been estimated at $1 trillion.

The fate of any fisheries disaster funding amendment might not be decided until after the Nov. 6 elections, according to a lobbyist for the American Farm Bureau Federation, the nations biggest farmer group, who was quoted in the BloombergBusinessWeek report.

Richard Gaines can be reached at 978-283-7000, x3464, or at rgaines@gloucestertimes.com.

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## MIke R

and here we go again...a 20 footer...now THATS a big boy

http://www.capecodonline.com/apps/pb...919880/-1/NEWS

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## sbhlvr

check out this video of a 15' female that was tagged the other day.

http://www1.whdh.com/news/articles/l...-off-cape-cod/

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## MIke R

this is a really good piece:





This New England Blog
Greg O'Brien: Great white sharks stay for Cape shoulder season

September 15, 2012 10:07 pm
By Robert Whitcomb

By GREG O'BRIEN

CHATHAM

It was a bear of a summer on Cape Cod. Then came the sharks.

A marauding black bear early on, mugging for the cameras, cut a serpentine path
across Cape Cod on Memorial Day, then held sway in the press until Jaws returned.


At first it was a joke. You could hear the oboe wafting off Pleasant Bay as gray seals,
thousands of them, sunned on the mudflats at low tide, then wobbled in blubber out to the killing fields. Scores of us were in our boats, chumming for a photo op.

An estimated 15,000 gray seals and a few dozen Great White Sharks, up to 20
feet long,, crashed the party on the Cape where upwards of a half million people
crowd onto this sliver of sand, the "bared and bended arm of Massachusetts," as Thoreau once described it, to celebrate the solstice.

There was hardly room left for the Piping Plovers.

It's post Labor Day, thank God, and they're all gone, right?

But just when you thought it was safe to go back into the water, the Great Whites
linger with the seals, and have now been spotted in Chatham Harbor. The sharks will be
here thorough the holidays, says state Division of Marine Fisheries shark expert Greg
Skomal , of Martha's Vineyard, a Discovery Channel contributor.

He's a modern-day Hooper, the cerebral oceanographer that Chief Brody hired on Amity Island to find the Carcharodon carcharias that could swallow you whole. "We don't know if this summer represents a shift in the existing shark population, given exceedingly higher numbers of seals here, or if there's actual population growth with sharks," Skomal said in an interview.

There's no doubt that the gray seal population has exploded with the Marine Mammal
Protection Act of 1972, and will continue growing fast.The species was once hunted in the thousands for pelts and speared by angry fishermen apoplectic over hungry seals robbing the fisheries.

New math, old math, it's all the same. The more gray seals, the more Great Whites.

Yikes! We're gonna need a bigger boat. "The ocean beaches are still closed,"
declared Chatham Board of Selectmen chairperson Florence Seldin, affectionately called
in these parts ''the mayor of shark city.''

"This is not about hype," she said. "It's simply the prudent thing to do."

Paul Fulcher, park superintendent at the neighboring Orleans Parks Department,
where he oversees a swath of Atlantic shoreline from Chatham's new cut to the Eastham
line, said Great Whites are coming so close to shore that you can almost spit on
them. "I've seen them within 15 feet of the beach," he said.

The seals themselves also have closed beaches, 17 days in fact for bacterial
contamination--fecal coliform. Seals "are not wearing diapers," Barnstable County's top
health official George Heufelder told the Cape Cod Times, noting that contamination from
seal colonies can be dispensed by ocean currents to the shoreline "like a shotgun."

Now that temperatures are dropping and the sun is lower in the sky, shark experts
and Cape officials are pondering next season, which promises to bring even more
intruders. Great Whites, the world's largest known extant macropredatory fish, are as
mysterious as they are fearsome, relying on highly sophisticated sensory systems,
Skomal says. "I have great respect for sharks," he adds, "I've been in the water with them
for 30 years."

Fifty-year-old Chris Myers, a father of two who grew up on Joy Street on Beacon
Hill, isn't so lucky. He was attacked by a Great White in late July, swimming with his
son about 400 yards off bucolic Ballston Beach in Truro. Bitten on both legs, wounds
requiring 47 stitches, he was rushed to Cape Cod Hospital, then Massachusetts General HHospital.

"I taste lousy," he joked afterwards.

Taste is key to a Great White's appetite, says Skomal, noting sharks prefer lard--
loads of it--to a long, hairy leg. Consumption of a 700-pound gray seal, a meal that starts with a ballistic strike that would spook the Antichrist, can satisfy a Great White for
almost a month, adds Skomal.

It's the anticipation that strikes terror in all of us. Cue the oboe. "The dread of the
unknown puts the fear of God in us," says counselor John Piekarski, of Sandwich. "We
can't see below the surface of the water, and thus we are always frightful of what's
nibbling at our feet. People take these fears home with them."

Call it sharkanoia. Take three aspirin, Piekarski muses, call me in the morning,
and rest assured there's nothing under your bed. Unless, of course, it's a land shark.

Surfers, the bane of many beachgoers who compete for the best waves, are
generally relaxed about sharks, or so they say. Scores of surfers in full wetsuits, looking
like baby seals, bob like wine corks in the roiling ocean waters, looking for swells.

"We don't talk much about sharks," says Rick Weeks, who has been surfing these waters for 48 years. "I suppose we're all in denial, afraid to confront what threatens our passion."


While the ocean beaches are still closed to swimming, the shops are bustling, selling a cornucopia of shark sticks, bumper stickers and shark patrol T-shirts (bought one). Soon all will be quiet here as Indian summer gives way to deep autumn. But don't be fooled. Sharks are staying for the "shoulder season.'' Just when you thought it was
safe to go back into the water...

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## sbhlvr

That is a great summary. So true. I bet Paul Fulcher isn't going to miss any of this in his retirement. There was a good article in The Cape Codder about him and his time with the Orleans park & Rec.

We finally are getting the Blue Claws back in Meeting House Pond. However, now we have 2 resident seals. To make matters worse, a few boaters are anchoring just off of our dock to catch the ones in the area. A part of me wants to yell at them to not catch them, or at least do a catch and release thing. They are having a hard enough time with all the seagulls eating them.

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## MIke R

blue claws????..really???...wow..that would be very cool

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## andynap

Seals love crabs

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## MIke R

the love everything and anything that swims...their like giant effin Hoovers in the ocean....LOL

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## george

Genie is moving south-west... better pastures maybe??

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## MIke R

maybe

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## NHDiane

Hope she takes her 20 ft. boyfriend with her   :Big Grin:

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## sbhlvr

> blue claws????..really???...wow..that would be very cool



yes, some of them have been pretty big too!

we used to have a lot of mussels & clams around our reeds/mud flats. nitrogen increase, so they have really decreased.

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## MIke R

yeah I didn't think  blue claws came this far north....I know there is no chance we would ever see them being on the cold side....but I didn't know you got them on the warm side...geez let me know next summer and I will come down and catch a few

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## sbhlvr

the temp in Meeting House gets in the 70's so I can see how they would like it.

anytime you want, let me know. we'll be there on Sat. about noon.

We're going to see Peter and Jim Mayer(again)in Dover NH on Friday night.

check out this YouTube video from Sat. 130 people. we were in the front row.

http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http...cp&h=_AQE58Tfl

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## MIke R

this is my last weekend down there...   :Frown:  

love that song

enjoy the show!

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## george

Remember Mary Lee? Our 3,500 lb snowbird from Cape Cod?

http://jacksonville.com/opinion/blog...ach-surf-break

marylee_01.jpg

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## Rosemary

There is a nice article in Wooden Boat magazine this month about the Richard and Arnold, based out of Provincetown.

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## MIke R

> There is a nice article in Wooden Boat magazine this month about the Richard and Arnold, based out of Provincetown.




I saw that....great boat.....super people.....as ol school as l school gets

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## Rosemary

The picture of the wiring in the wheelhouse was scary.  Great story.

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