[ad_1]
LIDO BEACH, N.Y. — It was a traditional early summer season Friday at Level Lookout Seashore on Lengthy Island, with beachgoers frolicking within the frothy waves and basking underneath the sunny skies.
However farther out, simply past the swimmers, was a extra pressing scene: a lifeguard on a Jet Ski circling constantly whereas Nassau County cops surveyed the waters by boat and helicopter.
It was an instance of the stepped-up shark patrols alongside the greater than 100 miles of Lengthy Island’s seashores which have adopted a pointy uptick in sightings final summer season.
“It’s turn into a part of our day by day routine,” mentioned a lifeguard supervisor, Justine Anderson, of the shark patrols her City of Hempstead lifeguards have begun this summer season. “We’ll patrol all through the day and reply instantly if we get a report of a shark sighting.”
Up to now, Ms. Anderson mentioned, shark sightings had been exceedingly uncommon. However final summer season introduced day by day cases of sharks feeding on bait fish alarmingly near swimmers, necessitating short-term closings of swimming areas alongside Lengthy Island’s oceanfront.
Up to now this summer season, a 10-foot mako shark washed up at Level Lookout over Memorial Day weekend, prompting one other spherical of shark headlines. And simply this week, the authorities mentioned a person swimming at Jones Seashore could have been bitten by a shark.
Lifeguards who work summers on Lengthy Island seashores have historically been anticipated merely to maintain an eye fixed out for the occasional dorsal fin and assess the validity of stories from jittery beachgoers who swear they only noticed the second coming of “Jaws.”
However now, lifesaving departments on Lengthy Island — that are on the similar time dealing with staffing points amongst a nationwide lifeguard scarcity — are taking the shark scenario extra critically.
On Friday, the Nassau County government, Bruce Blakeman, held a information convention at close by Nickerson Seashore to announce that the county police can be growing patrols this summer season, each by boat and by helicopter, to do hourly runs over the shoreline.
Quite a few different departments throughout Lengthy Island have additionally begun adopting new shark-monitoring methods and expanded their lifesaving instruments to incorporate drones, Jet Skis and paddleboards, in addition to on-line shark monitoring. Native police departments are additionally now tasked with shark patrol by boat and helicopter.
At Jones Seashore and Robert Moses State Park, practically 20 lifeguards, park police and different seashore employees members have lately been educated to function a fleet of seven drones as a part of a brand new aerial shark-monitoring program.
“It’s like a brand new world we’re dwelling in,” mentioned Cary Epstein, a veteran guard at Jones Seashore, which, together with Robert Moses State Park, employs about 375 lifeguards. “In my 25 years as a lifeguard, we by no means had to do that.”
“This isn’t ‘Jaws,’ we’re not speaking about a fantastic white, man-eating machine — but when a thresher shark comes by and takes a nibble in your foot, that could possibly be an issue,” mentioned Mr. Epstein.
A brand new drone unit at Jones Seashore is following Mr. Epstein’s lead; he started monitoring the waters final summer season along with his personal private drone after a fellow guard was gashed within the leg whereas swimming, presumably by a shark. A day later, swimming was suspended due to a shark sighting.
“We’re positively on alert and doing our due diligence,” Mr. Epstein mentioned, noting that they have been “not trying to find sharks unnecessarily.”
City of Hempstead seashores employed extra lifeguards this summer season to be careful for sharks and have mobilized a shark patrol on Jet Skis, in addition to a drone squad. Along with water rescue methods and C.P.R., the city’s ocean guards are additionally educated to distinguish between shark species, to establish ones which are extra harmful to swimmers.
Lifeguards at close by Lengthy Seashore, which closed swimming areas greater than a dozen instances final summer season due to shark stories, have invested in three Jet Skis to help with shark patrols.
Farther east, Smith Level seashore lifeguards conduct morning shark patrols on Jet Skis and paddleboards, seashore officers mentioned. They’ve additionally begun stocking tourniquets of their first help kits in case of shark assaults.
And in East Hampton, lifeguards are utilizing a web-based shark tracker to maintain an eye fixed out for the return of huge ones like Mary Lee, a 4,000-pound, 17-foot-long nice white that’s tagged with a monitoring machine.
After all, the mere point out of sharks and summer season seashores frustrates marine consultants who say the animals pose no actual elevated hazard to swimmers.
Assaults are extraordinarily uncommon domestically and plenty of consultants say shark patrols do little however gasoline unwarranted terror of sharks.
Hans Walters, a area scientist with the Wildlife Conservation Society’s New York Aquarium who has spent over a decade learning sharks in New York waters, mentioned the most recent hype over sharks close to the seashores was “very overblown.”
The menace to individuals from sharks is virtually nonexistent, he mentioned, and there’s no actual proof that native shark populations have elevated in recent times.
“The hazard to individuals is infinitesimal,” he mentioned.
There have been maybe solely a dozen documented shark assaults in New York waters going again centuries, he mentioned, and most of these have been extra seemingly unintended collisions leading to a gash, reasonably than a shark actively biting a swimmer.
Swimmers ought to be assured, Mr. Walter mentioned, that sharks are usually not enthusiastic about them.
“If anybody’s been within the ocean, they’ve already swum with sharks,” he mentioned. “They only don’t understand it.”
The primary causes for extra sightings, based on Mr. Walters, are a rise in monitoring and an uptick within the sharing of civilian telephone and drone photos, which unfold extensively on social media and inevitably make headlines.
“These sharks are usually not searching for individuals,” he mentioned. “They’ve been prowling the ocean for thousands and thousands of years and there are not any extra sharks right here this 12 months, or final 12 months, or the 12 months earlier than that. We’re simply searching for them extra.”
Nonetheless, dealing with heightened issues from the general public, many seashore operators are searching for to guarantee beachgoers that they’re watching out for them.
“When the mako washed ashore, that spurred issues from residents,” mentioned the Hempstead city supervisor, Don Clavin. “So we wished them to relaxation assured our persons are on the market taking all these precautions, that all the things’s being monitored and we’re going above and past.”
In Lengthy Seashore, there are common sightings of spinner sharks feeding on bait fish offshore, mentioned the lifeguard chief, Paul Gillespie.
However whereas he dismissed a lot of the fuss over sharks as media and political hype, he added: “You may’t poo-poo it both, so we all the time examine each report by getting the jet skis within the water and looking out up and down the shoreline.”
At City of East Hampton seashores, sharks feeding on bait a number of hundred yards out are tolerated, but when they get a lot nearer than 200 yards from the shore, swimming is curtailed, mentioned John Ryan Jr., the city’s lifeguard chief.
“They’re feeding on bait — they’re not cruising the shorelines search for individuals,” he mentioned. “However if you happen to don’t do something after which one thing occurs, that’s an issue.”
Chris Stefanou, 26, a Lengthy Island fisherman who participates in a federal shark-tagging program monitoring shark migration, mentioned he had seen extra sharks in native waters yearly as water temperatures had elevated.
There’s a rising presence of hammerheads and bull sharks domestically, which have beforehand averted the colder native waters, based on Mr. Stefanou, who mentioned he had caught practically 1,000 sharks — as much as 14 toes lengthy — whereas surf-casting from native seashores over the previous 9 years. (He exhibits off his catches on Instagram.)
“There are an increasing number of sharks within the water, which sounds scary,” he mentioned. “But it surely’s truly a superb factor as a result of it displays a wholesome ecosystem.”
[ad_2]