Long Island a Possible 'Breeding Ground' For Great White Sharks, Experts Say

Ever since the blood-curdling screams of an ill-fated skinny dipper, who met her famous demise in the opening scene of "Jaws," generations of beach-goers have approached the water with bone-chilling trepidation.

Now, a leading shark research team has said it suspects Long Island might be a breeding ground for great whites and has launched a tagging expedition to be able to determine potential birthing sites.

But the news isn't reason to panic: Experts agree that swimmers have a greater danger of being killed by a faulty toaster oven — or driving on the Long Island Expressway, for that matter — than being devoured by a shark.

According to OCEARCH Chief Operating Officer Fernanda Ubatuba — OCEARCH is a nonprofit organization dedicated to shark research — if you look at a global shark tracker, five mature female great white sharks have been tagged in the past three to four years, and it seems that "there is certain activity in that region."

Great white sharks, she said, travel from Florida to Canada, "and you can see their activity sometimes overlaps around Long Island."

OCEARCH has launched a Kickstarter campaign to tag and research great white sharks in the North Atlantic; that research might help to investigate sample sites and ultimately determine definite breeding sites around Long Island, Ubatuba said.

The team will tag juvenile great whites in New York waters, the campaign site says.

Technology utilized by OCEARCH aims to allow people to see, in real time, "breeding and mating sites for the first time in history. It's amazing," she said.

Sharks, experts agree, are far less of a danger to people than mankind is to sharks.

Worldwide, 200,000 sharks are killed per day, or up to 100 million every year. "That's a stunning number," Ubatuba said.

In contrast, about 10 to 12 human lives are lost yearly as a result of shark attacks. "You have more risk of dying by a defective toaster or driving a car than a shark attack, but it's perception," she said.

There are few shark attacks worldwide, Ubatuba said.

Instead, sharks are victims: Sharks are at great risk worldwide due to an industry in Asia and other areas that rely heavily on shark skinning. "It's wiping out our oceans completely," she said.

As apex predators of the ocean, sharks are critical to maintaining healthy ocean systems.

"The current problem we face in shark conservation is that we do not have the necessary data to understand the migratory patterns of our ocean’s apex predators, mating and birth sites — the locations we need to protect," the Kickstarter site says.

The breeding sites "are being discovered for the first time," Ubatuba said. It's necessary to judge at least two breeding sites to determine what they have in common and what draws the sharks there, she added.

Ubatuba said the goal of the Kickstarter is to connect people from New York to the ocean, to make them aware of what's going on in Montauk, Southampton and across Long Island, "to bring more data so we can really understand what is going on in the waters of New York."

It's important to replace "fear with facts," Ubatuba said. By using the shark tracker, beach-goers can use that information to "make the best judgment when to go to beach and when to avoid it."

Why Long Island is fertile ground for sharks

Long Island is a good place for breeding because, as in other areas of the world where great white sharks breed, the topography includes protected areas, with its shape including bays, said Ubatuba. In addition, food resources and fish bring the sharks "to a safe region to drop their pups," she added.

It's important to determine birthing sites to keep them safe; sharks do not become sexually mature until they are 20 years old. "It takes a long time," she said.

"We're not on the menu"

Joe Yaiullo, curator and co-founder of the Long Island Aquarium and Exhibition Center, said there are precautions swimmers can take, such as not going into the water at dawn or dusk when bait fish, such as bunker, are being fed upon. "Avoiding that situation is always wise," he said.

But, for the most part, humans aren't the first choice for shark fare, he said. "We're not on the menu. If we were, sharks would just be lining up off of Jones Beach, Robert Moses and the Hamptons, just waiting for us to go in. But they're not. We're large, obnoxious, bony creatures in the water."

Sharks, Yaiullo said, don't have fingers to feel; instead, they "mouth" things, and many times, a shark attack is "just them being inquisitive, asking, 'Is this something I want to eat?' Most shark attacks are not a person getting eaten, it's usually a bite, and the shark swims off, leaving the person intact for the most part."

Deaths from shark attacks are not caused by people being consumed by sharks, he said; instead, victims often bleed out. "If it's a big shark, you might lose a limb but again, sharks eat fish, and seals, that don't have big bones."

Caution is key, Yaiullo said. "It's something to be aware of. Just as if you were going to walk into the plains of Africa, you'd be wary of a lion."

Whether or not Long Island is a breeding or pupping ground — OCEARCH research has yet to determine that with real-time data, he said — the area is a "good nursery area" with much food available for young.

Shark sightings are actually a good thing, he said. "With them being the apex of the food chain, if they're here, it's a good thing for humans," Yaiullo explained. "People shouldn't think that more sharks in the water mean they're going to be attacked. That's not the case at all."

Sharks are a sign of a healthy ecosystem with plentiful fish, clean water and less pollution, an indicator that the United States is doing a good job of managing its fisheries, he said.

Gone are the days of old Montauk tournaments, when shark were caught, hung from the dock and weighed, then thrown into dumpsters, said Yaiullo. Today's tournaments are tag-and-release events, he said.

He agreed sharks are at risk worldwide. "It's important to spread a conservation message," Yaiullo said. "Not eating shark fin soup, or engaging in all these bad practices. We humans kill a hundred million sharks every year, for shark teeth and jaws. We're doing much more damage to them than they are to us. And if they are doing well, we are doing well."

OCEARCH research, Yaiullo said, also includes sand tiger sharks in the Great South Bay. OCEARCH buoys are set up, with permanent stations reading the signals of tagged sharks as they pass by.

Long Island is a good area for shark breeding because geographically it extends out into the Atlantic and the Gulf Stream from the South leads to a very fertile area, rich with nutrients, Yaiullo said. Runoff is a fertilizer, promoting growth of algae, which small shrimp eat, and so on, up the food chain. "It's rich water that supports the whole diversity of life," he said.

Anyone wishing to get up close and personal with a shark can visit the Long Island Aquarium for a Shark Dive, he said.

"There has never been a shark attack on Long Island"

On the East End, Mike Bottini, former chair of the Surfrider Foundation of Eastern Long Island, who still sits on the advisory committee, said locally, Greg Metzger, renowned shark expert, as well as Merry Camhi, director of WCS's New York Seascape, a joint program of the New York Aquarium and the Global Marine Program, have done cutting-edge research and spoken at the Long Island Natural History Conference.

One reason for the increase in sharks could be the explosion of the gray seal population after the passage of the Marine Mammal Protection Act and removal of bounty on seas in the 1970s, he said. The gray seals are a major source of food for great white sharks, he said.

Bottini, a naturalist, is also the head lifeguard at East Hampton's Main Beach; he started lifegaurding in the 1970s at Jones Beach and said shark sightings were relatively non-existent. "We rarely, I mean never, saw a shark," he said. "There has never been a shark attack on Long Island."

But despite the reality that the chance of a shark attack is relatively nil, Bottini said when he was working at Jones Beach and "Jaws" had just come out, "Every other person sitting on the beach that summer had that book. It spooked a lot of people, including veteran lifeguards. They're out of sight, so you think, 'Maybe they're in there. How do I know?' It's a little spooky."

And that's exactly why shark trackers have taken some of the fear out of the shark experience.

In fact, some sharks have become veritable celebrities.

Mary Lee, the famous 16-foot, 3,400-pound great white shark, made headlines when she was found to be lurking off the Long Island coast, headed toward Fire Island, and then East Hampton, in May.

She then headed off on a new trip and most recently was seen in Virginia.

Mary Lee has more than 96,000 followers on Twitter and has traveled more than 34,000 miles since she was first tagged off Cape Cod in September 2012, according to OCEARCH.

You can follow Mary Lee on OCEARCH’s Shark Tracker page here.