Y.O.Y Great White Washes up at Nantucket

Let us be the first to absolutely identify this critter as a great white-young of the year.

Monday July 14, 2008

By Jason Graziadei

Martha's Vineyard may have shark sightings, but Nantucket now has the real thing.

A seven-foot shark washed up on a beach off Sheep Pond Road Monday, and Marine Department officials believe it is either a young great white shark or a mako shark.

Representatives from the Division of Marine Fisheries will travel to Nantucket Tuesday to inspect it and attempt to identify the shark.

"It could well be a white shark, but we're not going to confirm what it is until we take a look tomorrow," said Lisa Capone, a spokesperson for the Division of Marine Fisheries.

After being discovered by several children on the beach, DPW workers along with an ATV police officer towed the shark off the sand and into a front-end loader parked on Sheep Pond Road.

Lifeguards and ATV police officers pulled swimmers out of the water at beaches along the south shore earlier on Monday after beachgoers reported seeing a shark in the water, beach manager Jeff Carlson said. A similar shark sighting was reported near Miacomet beach on Sunday afternoon.

Where The Basking Sharks Are...4146 feet!

Researchers using the latest tracking tech have discovered a quirky window into the ongoing mystery of the Basking Shark Cetorhinus maximus.

They dive deep, in one case to 4146 feet. Another mystery revealed is the bi-coastal nature of these critters- turns out these animals are both citizens of the U.K and Canada.

Worldwide tracking efforts are discovering this to be the case with almost every pelagic species tracked, making regulations and management all the more challenging.

We're just hung up on the 4146 feet deep dive. What are they doing down there?