What season might that be? Well, there is no debate, like the famous battle between Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck doing their best to sway hunter Elmer Fudd between hunting seasons, it is full on shark season off the eastern seaboard.
Luckily this year the local headlines have been more about sightings than bitings, but the same can’t be said for points further south. Talking about you New Smyrna, Florida where there have been several events, and more recently on Hilton Head Island South Carolina on the exact stretch of beach I was visiting with family and friends in early July.
The increase in the number of great whites off our coast centered around Cape Cod has been astonishing. In 2004 a well-documented siting of a great white trapped in a tidal marsh just south of Woods Hole was considered a rare occurrence. More recently a study by the group Atlantic White Shark Conservancy suggested there were 800 white shark visits to the waters off Cape Cod’s eastern shoreline each year between June and October from 2015 to 2018. That would qualify this area as one of the largest seasonal meeting areas for white sharks on earth.
If you’re wondering where the sharks are hanging out – more specifically, are they cruising the waters off the beach I’m about to go swimming at – as I’m sure you have heard there’s an app for that. (SHARK Tracker APP) You just have to assume that the shark patrolling your beach has been tagged, that the battery and the transmitter are working, the signal is reaching the satellite, the data is making it back to earth through Canadian wildfire smoke, the servers and software are operating efficiently and effectively, your app is refreshing in real time, and you have solid bars at this beach holding your phone while you wade into the water. (These fish are fast, just ask the seals, so you can’t assume the all clear you saw on the beach is still good a few minutes later.)
But if you simply want to know where sharks might be without all the hassle – this ad from a North Carolina beach community can sum it up for you. Just overlay the messaging across a map of the Cape.
Every summer as stories about these predators heat up I can’t think about sharks without immediately summoning quotes from one of the best movies ever made – Jaws.
(Not to be confused with JAWSH (Allen), the quarterback who gobbles up offensive yards and defensive backs like chum on a warm summer day.)
So, I thought it would be fun to list some of the more memorable lines from the movie, and test your skills for identifying who said what. Was it Chief Brody, Quint, Matt Hooper, Mayor Vaughn, or Ellen Brody?
To see if you’re right, just hover your mouse over the word Answer for each. Good luck! And always swim with a buddy. (Answer key at the bottom of the post if the mouse over text is not working for you.)
1. You’re gonna need a bigger boat.
2. Maybe you’re a big yahoo in the lab but out here you’re just supercargo.
3. In Amity, you say “yahd”.
4. Amity, as you know, means friendship.
5. That’s some bad hat, Harry.
6. Mary Ellen Moffit. She broke my heart.
7. My kids were on that beach too.
8. OK, so we drink to our legs.
9. I got no spit.
10. All this machine does is swim, and eat, and make little sharks.
11. I’ll never put on a lifejacket again.
12. I used to hate the water.
Want to share how you scored or add a line that’s missing? Throw it in the comments.
(Answers: 1. Chief Brody, 2. Quint, 3. Ellen Brody, 4. Mayor Vaughn, 5. Chief Brody, 6. Matt Hooper, 7. Mayor Vaughn, 8. Quint, 9. Matt Hooper, 10. Matt Hooper, 11. Quint, 12. Chief Brody)
9 out of 12
Smile you son of a…