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Great White Shark Possibly Located Off Greenwich Waters

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Cabot, the Great White Shark, gets looked at by the OCEARCH team located in the waters off Nova Scotia. (photo courtesy of OCEARCH)

By Paul Silverfarb
Sentinel Editor

For the past decade, the conservation effort in Long Island Sound has been in full swing. And the cleanup hasn’t gone unnoticed, as there is a chance Cabot has given the clean-up off the Connecticut coastline two fins up.

Monday morning, Cabot, the teenage Great White Shark, was spotted off the Greenwich coastline in Long Island Sound, and to say that Chris Fischer, OCEARCH Founding Chairman and Expedition Leader, is thrilled would be considered a massive understatement.

“It definitely caught us by surprise,” said Fischer. “We have never seen anything like that. We have had some little four-and-a-half foot sharks swing around just north of Montauk and slightly into the mouth of the Sound. But those are babies. To have a 10-foot white shark this deep into the Sound really surprised us.”

However late Monday night, OCEARCH informed the Sentinel with some new data they received about Cabot. OCEARCH is attempting to make sense of its newest data that has the shark located on the south side of Long Island. The information OCEARCH provided earlier today about Cabot’s location was accurate because they received four pings off Greenwich.

Monday night’s newest information has the OCEARCH team digging deeper in an effort to pinpoint Cabot’s exact whereabouts.

To read updates about Cabot’s location, check back with Greenwichsentinel.com.

If the shark was, indeed, in Long Island Sound waters off of Greenwich, it represents a big development for Fischer and his team at OCEARCH.

Cabot is a part of the North American White Shark Collaborative Study that is currently underway at OCEARCH. Last September, OCEARCH tagged Cabot in Nova Scotia, and since that time he has traveled all over, from the tip of Florida and back up north due to the warm waters down south. The shark is just over 10 feet long and is in his teens.

There hasn’t been a great white shark that has been verified in Long Island Sound in quite a while. Sure, during their migration to the waters surrounding Canada in the summer, great white sharks have been seen where the Atlantic Ocean meets the Sound. But in the Sound so far to the West that the shark is in Greenwich?

Cabot, the Great White Shark, gets tagged by the OCEARCH team located in the waters off Nova Scotia. (photo courtesy of OCEARCH)

“The first thing we did was spend a lot of time trying to verify the ping and make sure the shark was actually up that far to the West in the Sound,” Fischer said. “While we were digging into the data and trying to verify the ping, he pinged in three more times in the same area. So he did the work for us and confirmed he was in the region.”

With a plethora of bunker pouring out of the East River and stripers being active in the Greenwich area, as well as the cooler water temperatures in the high 50’s and cleaner environment, the timing for Cabot to make an appearance was perfect.

When Fischer initially analyzed the data and saw that Cabot might have been in Greenwich, the celebration was on.

“Cabot wouldn’t be in Greenwich if the quality of the water wasn’t good,” Fischer said. “But they have done so much to clean up the Sound over the last decade or so that we are finally starting to see the apex predator, the lion of the ocean, returning where you have an abundant amount of life, good water quality in the western part of the Sound and it’s really something to celebrate. It’s a testament to all the people who have been working so hard in that region to clean that Sound up. It’s an amazing, spectacular sign because white sharks don’t go to where the water is bad and there’s no life.”

In his words, Fischer simply put that his OCEARCH team is all about making sure there are lobster rolls and fish sandwiches for generations to eat.

“The path to abundance goes through the large sharks because they are at the top of the food chain,” Fischer said. “They prevent the second tier of the food chain of exploding and wiping out all the fish that we need to grow up and eat. In an effort to help the large sharks come back, we have to understand their lives, where they mate, where they give birth and how they migrate. We are cracking the code for the first time in history by bringing these big fishermen and scientists together to capture these large sharks for the scientists so they can actually study the sharks and solve their life history.”

Since his brief stay in the waters off Greenwich, Cabot has been quite the celebrity. His Twitter page (yes, the shark has a Twitter page), @GWSharkCabot has over 5,200 followers. The OCEARCH website, where people can live track Cabot and other sharks, http://www.ocearch.org, and has been bogged down and crashed several times due to so many new followers of Cabot’s travels.

And having Cabot and any one of his Great White Shark friends that could stop on by in the future, is good sign for not only sea life, but for people that enjoy the Sound on a daily basis.

“Having the sharks wanting to go there is really exciting for the people in the region because it means there’s going to be an abundance of fish for generations to come for the commercial sector and recreational section and for all of us to enjoy,” Fischer said.

Having clean waters where sharks feel welcomed is great for the environment, but people looking to enjoy the Connecticut coastline during the Memorial Day weekend seem cautious. Fischer said there shouldn’t be any concern.

“The fear of sharks is an irrational fear that doesn’t statistically exist,” Fischer said. “You’re more likely get struck by lightning twice and more likely to die while taking a selfie. You’re more likely to win the lottery than getting attacked by a shark. I do understand that it strikes everyone with a primal fear, but it really is a fear that doesn’t logically exist. To have a fear of sharks is really something that has been fabricated from movies.”

But seeing a great white shark in the Sound won’t last too long. With the water temperatures quickly rising, Cabot and his friends will continue their journey up the Atlantic Ocean to an area near Nova Scotia.

“So if you’re going swimming in the water on a nice balmy day, you’re not going be dealing with White Sharks at that point because they don’t like that water once it gets over 70 degrees or so,” Fischer said.

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