How many sharks were seen off of Cape Cod in August?

Portal was first spotted and tagged by conservationists in November 2022. Courtesy of the Atlantic White Shark Conservancy.

With August ending soon, the number of white sharks seen off in Cape Cod’s waters yielded to several appearances from tagged sharks and confirmed sightings of unknown sharks.

Around 85 sharks were detected by the Atlantic White Shark Conservancy, based in Chatham. Data for each shark spotted around the Cape can be found on their app, Sharktivity, which follows the movements of sharks swimming around the state’s waters.

Several sharks tagged by the conservancy made several appearances off the Cape’s shores. The sharks seen at least four times in August were Copy Cat, Cheerio, Scarface, Cow, Padre, Iceland, Mr. Pallas, Portal, Terp, Big Daddy and Chrispy.

Along with several other sharks, each of those tagged was typically spotted around buoys located off the shores of Newcomb Hollow Beach and Cahoon Hollow Beach, both in Wellfleet; north of Nauset Beach in Orleans; and off of North Beach Island in Chatham.

For years, Cape Cod has been a hotspot where white sharks gather during the summer months. On July 27, a study published in the latest edition of the Marine Ecology Progress Series said that between 2015 and 2018, 800 white sharks were detected around Cape Cod.

White sharks travel thousands of kilometers every year “to optimize foraging opportunities but are only available to survey efforts at coastal aggregation sites that constitute a small fraction of their overall range,” the study said. The challenge in documenting them depended on the frequency with which sharks were seen in one particular spot year after year.

“Therefore, we view reliable abundance estimates as not only critical for management but also for navigating the complex societal conflicts that will arise when and where white shark populations recover, which will likely present the next major conservation challenge for this iconic species,” the study said.

Overall, there were about 51 sharks detected or spotted since the start of August. The number of white sharks in Cape Cod waters began to uptick in July, according to researcher Greg Skomal, the senior fisheries scientist at Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries.

See below to see all other sharks spotted or detected around Cape Cod since Aug. 1:

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