LIDO BEACH, NY – It’s a classic early summer Friday at Point Lookout Beach on Long Island, with beachgoers frolicking in the rolling waves and basking under a sunny sky.
But beyond the swimmers, was a more urgent scene: a lifeguard in a Jet Ski circled continuously while Nassau County police surveyed the waters by boat and helicopter.
It was an example of increased shark patrols along more than 100 miles of Long Island’s beaches, followed by a sharp increase in sightings last summer.
“It has become part of our daily routine,” said Justine Anderson, a lifeguard supervisor, who said during her Hempstead Town shark patrol, lifeguards began entering this summer. “We will patrol throughout the day and respond immediately if we receive reports of shark sightings.”
In the past, Ms. Anderson said, sightings of sharks were extremely rare. But last summer, daily cases of bait sharks came alarmingly close to swimmers, which is essential. Temporarily closed Swimming area along the coast of Long Island.
So far this summer, a 10 foot long mako shark drift into Point Lookout over Memorial Day weekend, sparking another round of shark headlines. And just this week, authorities said a man was swimming in Jones Beach may have been bitten by a shark.
Lifeguards working in the summer on Long Island beaches have traditionally simply kept an eye on the occasional dorsal fin and assessed the validity of reports from anxious beachgoers, who swore they had just seen the second appearance of “Jaws”.
But now, lifesaving departments on Long Island – which simultaneously face staffing problems between a lack of national lifeguards – is taking the shark situation more seriously.
On Friday, Nassau County executive Bruce Blakeman held a news conference at nearby Nickerson Beach to announce that county police will increase patrols this summer, both by boat and by helicopter. climbing, running for hours on the beach.
Many other departments across Long Island have also begun adopting new shark surveillance strategies and expanding their lifesaving tools to include drones, jet skis, and paddleboards, as well. like online shark tracking. The local police department is also now tasked with patrolling sharks by boat and helicopter.
At Jones Beach and Robert Moses State Park, nearly 20 lifeguards, park police and other beach officers were recently trained to operate a fleet of seven drones as a part of the new aerial shark surveillance program.
“It’s like a new world we live in,” said Cary Epstein, a veteran guard at Jones Beach, which, along with Robert Moses State Park, employs about 375 lifeguards. “In our 25 years as lifeguards, we’ve never had to do this.”
“This is not ‘Jaws .’“We’re not talking about a great white, man-eating machine – but if a head-banging shark goes by and gnaws your leg, that could be a problem,” Mr. Epstein said.
A new drone unit at Jones Beach is following Epstein’s lead; he began monitoring the waters last summer with his personal drone after a fellow defender suffered gasping in his leg while swimming, presumably from a shark. A day later, swimming was suspended because of a shark sighting.
“We are certainly on alert and conducting due diligence, noting that they are ‘not looking for sharks unnecessarily’,” Mr Epstein said.
Hempstead Town Beaches has hired more lifeguards this summer to keep an eye out for sharks and has deployed a shark patrol on Jet Skis, as well as a fleet of drones. In addition to water rescue and CPR techniques, the town’s ocean guards are also trained to distinguish between shark species, to determine which ones are more dangerous to swimmers. .
Lifeguards at nearby Long Beach, which closed swimming areas more than a dozen times last summer because of shark reports, have invested in three jet skis to aid patrols shark.
Farther east, Smith Point beach lifeguards conduct morning shark patrols on Jet Skis and paddleboards, beach officials said. They have also started stocking up on tourniquets in their first aid kits in case of a shark attack.
And in East Hampton, lifeguards are using online shark trackers to track the return of large sharks like Mary Leea white giant weighing 4 m, 17 feet long with a tracking device.
Of course, the mere mention of sharks and summer beaches disappointed marine experts, who say the animals pose no increased danger to swimmers.
Attacks are extremely rare locally and many experts say shark patrols do little but cause unwarranted terror against sharks.
Hans Walters, a field scientist at the Wildlife Conservancy’s New York Aquarium who has spent more than a decade studying sharks in New York waters, says the new hype The best thing about sharks near beaches is that they are “very overblown”.
The threat to humans from sharks is practically non-existent, he said, and there is there is no actual evidence that the local shark population has increased In recent years.
“The danger to humans is very small,” he said.
There have probably only been dozens of shark attacks recorded in New York waters in the past several centuries, he said, and most of them were accidental collisions that resulted in a collision rather than a collision. not a shark actively biting a swimmer.
Mr. Walter said swimmers should be reassured that sharks don’t care about them.
“If anyone was in the ocean, they would have swam with the sharks,” he said. “They just don’t know it.”
According to Mr. Walters, the main reason for more people to see is the increase in surveillance and the increase in sharing images of consumer phones and drones, which are widely spread on social media. social media and definitely make headlines.
“These sharks are not looking for people,” he said. “They have been prowling the ocean for millions of years and there are no sharks here this year, last year, or the year before that. We’re just looking for them more. ”
However, in the face of growing public concern, many beach operators are looking to assure beachgoers that they are paying attention.
Hempstead town supervisor Don Clavin said: ‘When the mako washed up on the beach, it fueled concern among residents. “So we want them to have peace of mind that our people are out there taking all these precautions, that things are being monitored and we’re getting further and further ahead.”
In Long Beach, it is common to see spinner sharks foraging offshore, said sheriff Paul Gillespie.
But while dismissing much of the shark buzz as media and political hype, he added: “You can’t poke fun either, so we always investigate every report by how to put jet skis in the water and look up and down the shoreline.”
John Ryan Jr., the town’s lifeguard chief, said that at East Hampton Town’s beaches it is acceptable for sharks to eat their prey hundreds of meters away, but if they get closer to 200 meters than they are. With the coast, swimming will be restricted, said John Ryan Jr., the town’s lifeguard chief.
“They’re foraging – they don’t go on the shore looking for people,” he said. “But if you don’t do anything and then something happens, that’s a problem.”
Chris Stefanou, 26, a Long Island fisherman who participates in the federal shark-tagging program that tracks shark migration, said he’s seen more sharks in local waters each year as the heat rises. water level increases.
According to Stefanou, he said he has caught nearly 1,000 locally occurring hammerhead and bull sharks, species that previously avoided the local colder waters. the past nine years. (He show off his catch on Instagram.)
“There are more and more sharks in the water, which sounds scary,” he said. “But that’s actually a good thing because it reflects a healthy ecosystem.”
