Most dangerous place for shark attacks where you should NEVER swim is revealed by expert
TO avoid shark bites, beachgoers have to change their swimming habits because the ocean is the liveliest it's been since the 1950s, a shark expert has said.
"If you go for a hike in the woods, you're not going to walk into the middle of the lion that's in pursuit of the deer," founder Chris Fischer told The Sun. "The same goes for the ocean."
It really starts with New York and New Jersey's protection of the menhaden - also known as bunker- which swim in large "clouds" and attract predators like sharks.
The two northeast states restricted recreational menhaden fishing in state waters, which is defined as three miles from the shore.
That's the biggest clue to watch, Fischer said, because of how sharks hunt.
CROWDING TACTIC - KNOW IT, WATCH FOR IT AND YOU'LL BE SAFE
Sharks push their prey like menhaden against the beach in a hunting tactic called crowding.
SHARK STORIES
"If they crowd the bait against the beach, it can't flee away. They can't go down because it's too shallow and can't go to the side because the shore is there," Fischer said.
"And then when they get them crowded, the sharks start darting through them and they take turns so they can more successfully feed."
Knowing that, Fischer said the biggest key is to watch for a "big ball of bait" anywhere near the beach because sharks and other predators are likely not far behind.
TIPS FOR BEACHGOERS
"My tip to beachgoers is to find a nice, quiet section of beach where that's not happening. That's where you want to spend your time in the water," Fischer said.
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Those clouds of fish move up and down the shore, so if you notice a ball of fish being pushed down the beach, "get out of the water and watch it."
"It's an awesome experience. It's like a New York Safari, you know, an ocean New York Safari," Fischer said.
"People pay a lot of money to go around the world to see things like that. Sit down and watch it and enjoy it. You're watching something that hasn't been seen for 60 or 80 years," he said.
Usually, the cloud fish move along the coast after about 20 to 30 minutes, he said. They might return an hour or two later.
"Once that bait ball slides on down the beach away from you, and the ocean goes nice and quiet and the birds aren't crashing on the bait, enjoy yourself in the water," Fischer said.
"It's about changing our mindsets about how we interact in the ocean. We grew up in an ocean that was so wiped out because we depleted it."
'TIME TO EVOLVE AS HUMANS'
"Now we need to evolve. We need to change. We need to understand it's not the same ocean that it was in the 80s 90s and early 2000s, where it was mostly dead," Fischer said.
"We killed all the seals. We sucked up all the menhaden for pet food. We gill netted out all the strippers and redfish and cod and other things because at the time we thought that the ocean was so big that we couldn't affect it by taking from it harvesting.
"You could just walk in anywhere and nothing happened because we've wiped everything out. What's happening now as humans is we're having to kind of change and we're having to modify our behavior."
EXPLAINING LONG ISLAND SHARKS
That's why there's been more than a half dozen shark sightings or shark bites off the coast of Long Island, which was unheard before the pandemic.
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"We're in the middle of a slow, steady recovery of those populations, so it's just something you're gonna see now and again," Fischer said, "because there are more sharks, and there are people in the water and there are poor interactions.
"This is not a mystery. This is not some sort of radical climate change situation. The ocean is returning to what it is supposed to be. It's just that none of us have been alive long enough to have seen that."
