It’s now confirmed that a woman in her late 20s who was pulled from the water off Norton Point last Monday with wounds to her lower leg suffered the first unprovoked shark bite on the Island in recent memory.
Greg Skomal, a marine biologist with the state Division of Marine Fisheries and a top shark expert, told The Times Wednesday that the wounds were undoubtedly caused by a shark bite, most likely from a sandbar shark, also known as a brown shark.
Skomal worked closely with hospital staff on Martha’s Vineyard over the past week to examine medical photographs to get a sense of the nature of the wounds, uncover any other details that were relative to the incident from first responders and others on the scene, and confirm whether this was indeed the first unprovoked shark bite on the Island in recent memory.
Though Skomal’s conclusion is based on conversations with first responders, hospital staff, and some others on the scene, there was no evidence at the time of the bite that there was a shark, like commotion at the surface, birds feeding, or bait fish in the area. Still, he confirmed this was a shark bite. He theorized that the shark was moving through the edge of the beach at Norton Point, on the South Shore in Edgartown, and the victim was moving in a way that triggered the shark to think she was a “potential prey item,” but based on the extent of the wound, “it was not to the extent that the shark was trying to feed.”
The Times’ environmental reporter and managing editor Hayley Duffy spoke to Skomal in a brief interview Wednesday afternoon. Here is an abbreviated transcript.
Hayley Duffy: What is your conclusion? Do you think it was a shark bite?
Greg Skomal: I have no doubt that it is definitely a shark bite, and just building on what I told you last week, I said in my mind at the time, if it wasn’t a shark bite, there were three potential candidates in terms of species, and that would be the sandbar, or just locally known as the brown shark, the white shark, as well as the dusky shark. In conferring with other scientists, and again information from the doctors themselves, I think the strongest conclusion for us is that it was a brown shark, a sandbar shark, that did this.
[Sandbar sharks] are incredibly abundant around the Island, and have been this summer. They definitely patrol very close to shore, and this event happened very close to shore, and the nature of the wounds would be consistent with those from a bite from the sandbar shark. Having said that, I can’t 100 percent be sure because I wasn’t there; I didn’t see the fish, and I can’t 100 percent rule out that it wasn’t a dusky or a white shark. But if I was a betting man, I would put it on the sandbar shark.
HD: What was your process when investigating the wounds?
GS: For me, it involved conversations with medical staff, and we’re looking for patterns and shapes that would be indicative of the characteristics of the jaws of the potential species in the area, and you’re looking for diameter and depth, shape and tooth pattern, and the extent of tissue damage. So those kinds of things are really important to look at and take into consideration, and then you compare it to what potential animals live there. In this case, I know what kind of tooth pattern I would expect from a sand tiger versus a sandbar. And so it comes from that kind of experience, and in most cases, you can never be 100 percent sure because there’s differences between individuals within a species too, and there’s sometimes tooth loss and those kinds of things. So, it’s investigative, and you try to take in as much empirical evidence and CSI style as you can, but you can never be 100 percent sure.
HD: Do you know how big the shark was based on the nature of the wounds?
GS: The size of the wound is very telling. And I would place this shark anywhere between six and seven feet in length. Maybe five and a half to seven feet in length. It’s tough because you don’t know the exact angle of the bite itself. I mean, you can piece it together, but it wasn’t a really small shark. It was about probably the average size that they’ve been catching around the Vineyard the past few weeks, but on the larger side, probably between six and seven feet.
HD: How prevalent are brown sharks on the Island this time of year? Have you heard reports of more this year than other years?
GS: We know sandbar sharks will migrate, and this is well-established. There’s been a lot of fishing activity targeting this species over the past several decades. It’s a common practice on the east end of the Island, including the place where this event happened, at Norton Point, and so they migrate here, typically in late June into July, and will stay through September, leaving as waters cool off in October. They get large; they’ll get in excess of eight feet long and [more than] 250 pounds.
Typically, we tend to see sandbar sharks close to shore on the smaller side — anywhere between five and seven feet, as is the case with this particular shark. And there are a number of land-based fishermen that target them from the south side of the Cape, from the south side of the Vineyard, [and] other parts of the Vineyard too, in addition to the south side of the Nantucket Islands, kind of a traditional fishery. It’s a species that cannot be kept, has to be released, because the population is thought to be overfished, and there’s no retention on sandbar sharks. Having said that, on a relative scale, we’ve been getting numerous reports of sandbars around Massachusetts this year. The species typically doesn’t go north of the Cape, although we’ve had a couple of scattered accounts of that in recent years. But there are lots of sandbar sharks taken by land-based shore fishermen in those three areas — the Vineyard, Nantucket, south side of the Cape — as well as in offshore waters. I talked to somebody earlier today who just told me that he caught several sandbar sharks fishing south of the Island. So it’s a big year for them. I don’t know if that’s an upward trend that we can anticipate seeing for years to come. But definitely on a relative scale, hearing lots of reports of sandbar sharks.
HD: Should people at Island beaches be scared of going in the water?
GS: No, I mean, I think in terms of probability, this is a really low-probability event. This is the first, to my knowledge, unprovoked shark bite on the Vineyard, and I don’t anticipate this is going to continue. There are areas where these sharks appear to be more prevalent, perhaps along the south side of the Island, and just be mindful that they could be there. But I don’t think just in terms of the pure chance that this is likely to happen very frequently.
HD: When I spoke to Wendy Benchley last week, she said that a higher prevalence of sharks points to a healthier ocean. Do you feel the same way?
GS: Yes, a well-balanced ocean has all its major components, and that includes the top predators, which are the sharks. And so it is typically a sign of a healthy ocean when we have robust shark populations. Now, I think what’s important is that many of the shark species that we’re seeing more of these days were heavily impacted by the dramatic growth in commercial and recreational fishing for sharks that occurred in the late ’70s, ’80s, into ’90s, so we kind of became accustomed to not having sharks around because they had been largely been overfished. As we have taken steps in the U.S. to protect shark species and allow them to rebound; they’re now coming back, and that is the sign of a healthy ocean.
