I don't think there is anyone at this point, that hasn't seen the movies Jaws. When I was a kid, it naturally scared the crap out of me, to the point where I was nervous getting in the lake at camp. At the age of 7 or 8, you're generally fascinated and terrified of sharks at the same time.

As a young boy I was torn between thinking they were the coolest things ever, and thinking they were somehow evil. Like, descended-directly-from-the-devil kind of evil. As though they were made of dead fish and black magic. As we all know, that's not true, but more and more off the coast of New England, great whites are becoming common.

Sadly, just this summer a woman perished off our very own coast here in Maine, marking the first ever fatal shark attack here. As well as many sightings since. That's why, according to the Portland Press Herald, marine biologists in Maine and Massachusetts partnering to study the sharks in our waters.

Maine biologists will be placing almost two dozen acoustic receivers in Maine's near shore waters, to keeps tabs on sharks from Massachusetts, that have been tagged with special transmitters, so they can collect data about what the sharks are up to, and where they might be headed.

Currently, a little over two hundred sharks have been tagged in Massachusetts, and around 20% of those have been documented as heading our way. the hope is to help gather more data to help fill in some of the holes in the research. In fact, Maine biologists are considering starting their own tagging program as well.

We lived in a bubble for years where we thought this wasn't our problem. I think most people used to assume Great Whites were like rattlesnakes and scorpions, and that they just didn't exist off our coast. Unfortunately, we've had to learn that lesson the hard way this summer. Let's hope this research partnership can help replace fear with facts.

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Shark Species in Maine

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