Shark - White (and Yankee)

You may have read about the shark attack earlier this week on Cape Cod - off an Atlantic-side beach in the town of Truro (one of two towns that still have the feel of Olde Cape Cod, the other being Wellfleet). But I digress. A man and his son were body surfing 400 - 500 yards offshore when he was bitten on both legs, but made it to shore and was just releaded today from a Boston hospital. Shark experts have weighed in that the attack was almost certainly carried out by a Great White. Great Whites have been summering several towns south of Truro in the Chatham area the past few years because of the abundant seal population there (good sand bars for sunning - and escaping Great Whites). You may have caught the photo earlier in July of the shark following a kayaker in shallow Chatham waters.

Non-Yankees need not fret though. The Whites definitely seem to prefer a taste of New England. The kayaker is from Manchester, NH, and the next most recent Great White attack before this week was in 1936 on the other side of Cape Cod in Buzzard's Bay waters where a young boy from Dorchester, MA was killed. I posted on that incident in one of the first pieces I wrote after starting this blog.  Read about it here.

Now this week's Truro victim was visiting from the Denver area, so perhaps the shark realized on first taste that he/she was dealing with a non-Yankee. Maybe Yankees taste a lot like seal?  That's my working theory, for now.

So ya'll Southerners feel free to come on up to the Cape and enjoy our waters - unmolested. What's that, you don't get in the water unless it's 80 degrees or warmer.  Sorry, can't oblige on that count.