Shark season has begun on the Cape. Why aren’t swimmers concerned?

This year, shark season kicked off on the Cape with two sightings in late May and dozens since then, which experts said was on par for shark activity in recent years. Officials who manage beaches along the National Seashore said they prohibited swimming anywhere from five to 33 times in recent summers when sharks were detected near shore. These shark spotting measures and beach closures almost always keep swimmers on the Cape safe, but fatal attacks do occur: The last one, in 2018, occurred at Newcomb Beach in Wellfleet and killed a 26-year-old man from Revere.

Yet, beachgoers interviewed this week seemed more worried about the cold water than the sharks.

“Until we see someone get hurt by a shark, we probably won’t change our habits,” Charles Washburn said, noting that he and his wife, seasonal homeowners in Eastham, continue to regularly swim in the ocean.

Swimmers said they felt safe on the beaches because of lifeguards and detection efforts that officials say have become much more sophisticated in the past few years. Beaches now have a clear shark policy in place: When lifeguards, Atlantic White Shark Conservancy experts, shark spotting planes, or other shark detection efforts sense a great white is straying too close to a populated beach, they close down the water immediately for at least an hour.

These security measures, as well as the general rate of shark attacks, means the chance of an encounter is low, experts said. It’s not, however, impossible. They recommend anyone thinking of going into the ocean review the list of “shark smart” tips.

Advice includes swimming away from seals (which one expert referred to as “shark food”), listening to lifeguards, and staying close to shore. If a shark happens to attack, fight back by hitting it in the softer parts of its body, such as eyes or gills.

“We have to change our behavior in the presence of sharks, since they’re not going to change their behavior for us,” said Leslie Reynolds, deputy superintendent of the Cape Cod National Seashore.

Great white sharks didn’t always congregate near Cape Cod. Megan Winton, a senior scientist at the Conservancy, said that the area became a hot spot in the last 10 to 15 years because of the rising seal population and climate change. Changing temperatures have caused the northern Atlantic to warm, meaning that great whites now come to the area even earlier than in previous years.

“Most people don’t think of New England as a wild place,” Winton said. “It blows a lot of people’s minds that there are sharks on the coastline.”

Peak shark activity, she noted, does not occur until August through early fall, but July still holds the occasional shark sighting.

The Conservancy’s “Sharktivity” app, which allows for both experts at the Conservancy and citizens to report shark sightings, showed approximately 30 spottings in the last week. Most were close to Chatham and further south near the Monomoy refuge offshore.

Winton said sightings aren’t an accurate indicator of how many sharks there are, since the same shark can be spotted in different locations by different people. Also, the frequency of sightings varies by visibility and number of people looking at the ocean.

Even official sightings on the Conservancy’s website — which says, for example, that 87 individual sharks were detected off Coast Guard Beach in 2023 — aren’t always accurate, since most of those calculations are based on sharks that have been tagged.

Reynolds said that, so far this year, the National Seashore only had to close one of the beaches they manage due to a shark sighting: Head of Meadow Beach, in Truro.

This week on Coast Guard Beach in Eastham, there were signs of the security measures in place, should a shark appear. A purple flag with a white shark in the center flapped in the wind atop lifeguard towers. Signs at the entrance to the beach warned swimmers of great white shark presence alongside the Cape’s coastline. An unassuming white box near the descending stairs onto the sand contained supplies for “severe bleeding.”

Nevertheless, several beachgoers said that they still planned to swim, surf, and otherwise enjoy the ocean.

Sophie Walker, a Brewster resident who spent most of the day surfing, was not worried about shark attacks saying, “If it’s my time, it’s my time.”

Luke Mongillo, 17, visiting from Cheshire, Conn., said his family found the cold water more of a deterence than the presence of sharks. He, however, was happy to spend his afternoon submerged. “I have this rule where I don’t go out further than the furthest person,” he said. “So if anything happens, then they’ll be first.”

Others were a bit more cautious.

Thea Kane, sitting under a tent at Newcomb Beach — site of the 2018 fatal shark attack — said that she grew up coming to the Cape seasonally. She remembered when sharks “weren’t a thing.”

Now, her family makes sure someone stays behind on the beach while the others go swimming.

Samantha Young, a Norton resident who visits the Cape every summer, swims but panics whenever she feels seaweed on her foot. Yet, she’s not overly concerned.

“Realistically, I know you’re more likely to die in a car crash,” she said from her beach chair on Marconi Beach. “I always get anxious about sharks but never stay out of the water.”

A short drive away, at Coast Guard Beach, people swam, splashed, and waded much more than knee-deep into the water. Easily visible from shore was a lone seal, surfacing every few minutes before disappearing back into the ocean’s murky depths.

Madison Hahamy can be reached at [email protected]. Follow her @MHahamy.