Jenny Richardson-Rossbach and her family moved to Thomaston five years ago from a place she describes as “super, super sharky”: Monterey Bay, California.
She wasn’t expecting to see many in her new state, she said Wednesday at Lincolnville Beach as she held her infant daughter, who wore a onesie printed to look like a shark. But in recent years, there seems to be a “huge, huge difference” in the number of Maine shark sightings. Richardson-Rossbach said.
That hasn’t changed the family’s summer plans, she said, as they have plenty of beach options around the midcoast; she would need to know more about what’s happening in southern Maine, where numerous white shark sightings have been reported in recent weeks, to weigh the potential risks of swimming there.
“It makes me a little nervous, but it’s also like, if you’re gonna play in the ocean, there’s big stuff in there,” Richardson-Rossbach said.
It’s too early to say whether southern waters are becoming an important seasonal habitat for migratory white sharks, according to Matt Davis, who was hired as the state’s first shark biologist after Maine’s first fatal shark attack in 2020.
But the sightings indicate decades of federal protection measures for white sharks and the seals they eat may be bringing populations back up to historical levels — and it could mean shark awareness becoming a fact of life for some Maine swimmers. On Wednesday, beachgoers in Lincolnville were mostly undisturbed by recent reports from southern Maine and unsurprised to hear the local ocean has sharks in it.
“That’s their home. That’s where they live. It’s like going into the woods and not expecting to see a bear,” said a woman on a bench who gave only her first name, Janet.
Numerous white sharks have been spotted in southern Maine in recent weeks, including in Scarborough, where a 71-year-old lifeguard was dragged underwater by his flotation device after a shark grabbed it on Saturday. Reid State Park in Georgetown put swimming on hold Friday after another shark sighting, and Wells Beach was closed on Wednesday.
Harpswell is now flying shark awareness flags all summer following a string of sightings in July. That town was the site of the state’s first known fatal shark attack in 2020, the same year the state started tracking white sharks with tags and acoustic receivers to learn more about their behavior.
One white shark was reported Sunday in Frenchman Bay near Winter Harbor, the only area east of Phippsburg, on the eastern side of Casco Bay in southern Maine, with a confirmed sighting in the last 30 days, according to the tracking app Sharktivity. Video of the shark was shared with the TV station WABI by a trio of boaters on their way to compete in the Winter Harbor lobster boat races.
This summer, multiple individual sharks have been spotted around Scarborough, according to Davis, most of them the 6- to 7-foot length of juvenile white sharks.
“This is sort of abnormal for what we’ve seen previously,” he said, though it’s hard to say for sure because efforts to spot them ebb and flow.
Clear weather this year could mean people are using drones more often and observing sharks more, for example, he said.
But state survey data does show activity. Last year, two juvenile white sharks spent time in the Scarborough Beach area. A “fair number” are remaining in the same waters this summer.
For a scientist, that’s “pretty cool,” Davis said.
With only six years of state data, it’s too early to say whether Saco Bay and the Scarborough area definitely provide important habitat for them or whether current sightings indicate a trend. But based on evidence from the last two years, the area may be important for one reason or another.
That could be because there are lots of fish available, such as striped bass or other prey species, according to Davis.
White sharks were hunted heavily in the 1970s and ’80s, reducing their populations significantly. Federal protections added in 1997 made it illegal to intentionally kill them, and numbers have been rebounding since — slowly, because it takes years for the sharks to reach reproduction age.
Hunting seals, important prey sources for grown sharks, and other species was also limited by the Marine Mammal Protection Act in 1972.
“I think what we’re seeing is this population is finally starting to reach numbers that are more reflective of historic levels,” Davis said.
Ben Wolozin, who lives in the Boston area and was visiting Lincolnville Beach on Wednesday with his family, said sharks get a bad rap. He doesn’t worry about them as long as there aren’t seals around, he said, and considers them a risk to weigh on par with other beach issues like bacterial closures.
He also noted they are an ancient, and threatened, species — appearing in the fossil record before trees even existed, according to the Natural History Museum.
“As long as they don’t bite me, I have a great appreciation for them,” he said. “If they bite me or … kill me, I’d appreciate them much less.”
His grandson, Sammy, said he didn’t know there were sharks in Maine and thinks they’re cool, describing their camouflage skin that helps them hunt fish — something he relates to when trying to sneak candy at home, he said.
Though southern Maine is getting more attention, sharks are active along the coast. Sightings tend to occur where there are more people, such as the sandy swimming beaches drawing crowds of tourists in more heavily populated southern Maine, according to Davis.
People may also be less aware of reporting efforts Down East, he said, compared to southern beaches with more signage and public awareness.
A receiver station near Little Machias Bay last year detected about eight white sharks, according to Davis, but there’s less information currently to suggest whether they’re more transient in eastern waters or staying in place for longer.
In southern Maine, it’s still to be determined whether sightings are a new normal.
“It certainly seemed like that region…has something that the sharks want,” he said. “We need to figure out what and determine if this is the new normal or an anomaly.”
Chris Buck of Fairfield said he was in the Portland area several weeks ago when white sharks were spotted. He didn’t see any himself, but described the event as a “big hubbub.”
Buck doesn’t like to go in the ocean anyway, he said, but if he had children, he’d be nervous to let them swim in Scarborough now. He’s visited Lincolnville Beach annually since childhood and remembers hearing little about shark sightings even a decade ago.
“My mantra is, I’m a fan of the beach, not the ocean,” he said. “I’m a knee-deep kind of person.”
If populations continue increasing, which Davis said they’re likely to do under current management initiatives, swimmers need to be more aware of their surroundings, similar to hikers preparing to encounter wildlife.
Shark attacks are more rare than people often think, Davis added — only 11 confirmed attacks have happened in New England since 1837, not all of them fatal — and careful swimming can reduce risks.
He and his wife don’t plan to stop surfing, he said, and he doesn’t want people to be discouraged from enjoying the beach.
Recommendations include avoiding excessive splashing, wearing shiny jewelry, swimming near steep sandbar dropoffs where sharks hunt, where people are fishing and at dawn or dusk.
White shark sightings can be reported to the state on Sharktivity.
