Almost a year after a woman was fatally attacked by a great white shark while swimming in a bay in Harpswell, the state nearly tripled the number of acoustic shark detectors in waters along the Maine coast.
After the fatal attack on July 27, 2020, the state Department of Marine Resources deployed eight acoustic receivers in coastal waters, distributed between Wells and Popham Beach, after having already installed three in Saco Bay off Old Orchard Beach. The total of eleven recipients recorded shark pings that had been provided with transmitters by researchers collecting data on the presence of sharks along the coast.
Last summer’s shark attack that killed Julie Dimperio Holowach, 63, of New York City, was only the third fatal shark attack in New England since 1936. There have long been seasonal sightings of large sharks on Maine’s coastline, though such sightings may be considered uncommon. The death of Holowach remains the first known fatal shark attack in Maine.
The presence of large sharks in New England waters has likely increased over the past few decades, as a variety of conservation measures have been put in place to protect sharks and seals that are believed to be the preferred food choices for great white sharks.
Jeff Nichols, spokesman for the Department of Marine Resources, said the state installed 32 acoustic receivers this summer along the southern Maine coast, roughly between York and Boothbay Harbor.
“Our offering is mainly focused on coastal areas where there is a high level of beach recovery,” said Nichols on Thursday.
To help collect data, the state has also set up a shark sighting website where people who see large sharks in coastal waters can enter information and upload photos of what they saw.
The receivers do not transmit data remotely and are not intended to act as an active warning system for people who may be visiting nearby beaches when a shark signal is detected. The sensors need to be salvaged, brought ashore and their collected data downloaded so researchers can find out when they spotted sharks.
Maine State beaches and several other public beach areas, including Harpswell, use shark flags instead to warn visitors if a shark has been sighted in the area.
Nichols said the state plans to retrieve the sensors later this month, download the data, and then put them back in the water, where they will stay until late fall.
The purpose of the sensor system is to ensure officials have data to support their efforts to “protect public safety and provide vital information about great white shark migration and habitat use in the Gulf of Maine,” officials said for marine resources.
The data collected is shared with the New England White Shark Research Consortium, which includes fisheries officials in Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Canada, as well as marine conservation groups and federal and university researchers. After review by researchers, the data will also be shared with the public through Sharktivity, an app developed and operated by consortium member Atlantic White Shark Conservancy.
When eleven sensors were deployed in Maine’s coastal waters from late July to late November in 2020, they detected 45 tagged fish swimming along the coast. Of those, 16 were sharks – 14 great white sharks, one blue shark, and one sand tiger shark, according to the Department of Marine Resources.
In total, the sensors registered more than 20,000 pings of the marked fish, of which around 1,000 were from the marked sharks.
Nichols said there had been reports of sightings of great white sharks along the Maine coast this summer, but none of these have been confirmed. Several of these sightings turned out to be basking sharks, which, while large, are filter feeders that pose no threat to humans, he said.
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