Written by: CJ Chivers October 20, 2021

Nina Lanktor ran towards the disaster she had predicted. It was mid-September 2018. A moment ago, the marine lifeguard and former college swimmer Lanktor was having lunch in the parking lot of the beach at Newcomb Hollow in the town of Wellfleet in Cape Surgery. The season is over, and the crowds have decreased. She got off work, surfed with friends on Saturday morning, reveling in the satisfying atmosphere of local residents gathering together at the end of the summer. Then there was a shout: "Shark bites!"

In an instant, she stood up.

Earlier, Frank Toth noticed two men with surfboards walking towards a resting place south of the plot. Arthur Medici and Isaac Rocha are visiting from the suburbs of Boston. Medici, 26, is dating the older sister of Rocha, 16. They walked past a shark warning sign at about 9:30 a.m. and settled on the sea. On the side of a sandbar about six feet deep, waves were caught in the shallows. The morning brought sunshine, lingering warm water and small crowds. Grey seals swam past-one here, two there, a team. Rocha thinks these animals are cool. Soon after noon, he rode a wave into the foam. Medici flinched, waiting for his own.

A scream cut through the air, incomprehensible, no words. Rocha turned and saw a big shark beating around his friend. He kicked off his fins and dived into the waves through the water deep in his calves. After several knocks, he looked up and found that the water around Medici was stained with blood. Rocha is a strong swimmer. He must cover 30 yards. He halved the distance and raised his head again. Sharks are invisible. He thought, God, I don't know where that animal is, but please don't let anything happen to me. When he reached deeper water, Medici, who was about 6 feet tall and weighed 200 pounds, limped and became unresponsive. Rocha put his friend's face on the surface of the water and led him to the sandbank, where his own feet found the bottom, and he began to pull the Medici to the shore. The load increased with decreasing depth until Rocha was exhausted. The stranger took the last step of Medici to land.

On the sand dunes, Lankert saw a circle of people about 400 yards to the south. At the age of 26, she worked as a lifeguard for 9 years and an emergency medical technician for 6 years. She can read the beach. No one stayed in the water. In the disturbing new mode of life on Cape Cod, a sudden empty wave means the appearance of sharks. Ranko jumped down the sand dune, and her inner calm voice sounded, warning her not to overstretch herself. A man was injured and it said that when she found him, she had to work.

"I am EMT, I have a tourniquet!" she shouted as she approached the crowd. "Come back!" The people gave in, revealing Medici. He was unconscious with a wetsuit on his back and had a terrible wound on his leg. Rocha sobbed beside him. Two nearby doctors hunched over and sat next to Adriana Picariello, one of Wellfleet's chief lifeguards. Ranko slid to the beach and looked down.

Medici remained motionless, expressionless. His pupils are fixed and blank. He is not breathing. She checked his pulse. No. Scanning to get information quickly, she checked his wound. One leg was missing a large piece of meat, and the other leg was sprained. To make matters worse, the wound did not bleed or ooze significantly. Lancto's gaze followed the trail of trails that stretched from the water to Medici's silent body. There is not a drop of blood. She thought that his femoral artery or popliteal artery had been severed, and his blood had drained. Without hemostatic forceps and immediate blood transfusion, he has no rescue. The nearest hospital is more than 30 miles away. Ranko knows this mathematics. This is not great.

She heard the voice of a man from the crowd. "You must do something," he said.

Rocha tied a surfboard strap on one of Medici's legs. Lanctot put the tourniquet on the other, just below his groin, then tightened, clamping the quadriceps and hamstrings. The lifeguards and doctors worked frantically, pressing Medici's chest with their palms while performing mouth-to-mouth artificial respiration. Ranko felt a wave of sympathy. Medici's skin turned pale. Rocha was heartbroken. She hoped his mother would be there to comfort him. She held Medici's hand, hoping that he could feel the company, knowing he couldn't admit it.

A few minutes later, the paramedics hurried off the beach with a rebound. Soon, they lifted Medici over the sand and carried him into the ambulance, which pulled Rocha to the front seat.

Activities give way to purposelessness. Lanctot is surrounded by people she has known all her life: surfers, beach surfers, lifeguards, friends. All eyes were on Medici. There is nothing to do now. Medici is dead. The official announcement will come soon. She accepted a tearful hug and longed to stay clean. She and Picariello moved down the sand dunes into the calf-deep water. Ranko knelt on his knees, burying his head under the wave, and squeezing it down. There, no one could hear her voice, and she screamed.

In the past decade, the waters around Cape Cod have become one of the world's densest seasonal concentrations of adult white sharks. Acoustic marking data indicated that these animals entered the area during the extended daylight period in May, increased in numbers throughout the summer, peaked in October, and left most of the time in the dim light and sudden drop in temperature on Thanksgiving Day. For environmentalists, the annual return is a success story, and this is a welcome sign of the restoration of the ecosystem as many wild animal species are exhausted. But this phenomenon has unusual public safety implications. Unlike many places where adult white sharks congregate, these places are often remote islands with a large number of sea lions or seals, and the summer residence of sharks in New England overlaps with the tourist season of one of the most coveted recreation areas in the Northeast. In addition, these animals hunt in very shallow water, sometimes at the foot of the beach. This puts a large number of people in close contact with the fast and efficient giant predator, the most terrifying fish in the ocean in history.

The influx has upended assumptions about water use. Throughout the 20th century, Massachusetts reported three shark attacks; one incident in 1936 was fatal. Since 2012, the great white sharks of Cape Cod have been involved in five attacks, including two attacks on swimmers, one attack on Phuket surfers, and one attack on stand-up paddle boards and a manned kayak. To a lesser extent, the existence extends to the area. In 2020, a great white shark killed Julie Dimperio Holowach while she was swimming. She was swimming near her home in Casco Bay, Maine. The incident was the first recorded shark attack in the state that caused injuries, and it was particularly shocking because many residents did not know that these animals were feeding on the coast. "In Maine, we never knew we had great white sharks," said her husband, Al Holowach.

The risk of attack is still very low. But the number of large sharks and the fear that accompany them have caused cultural trauma, reshaped the way people experience the ocean, and forced coastal communities into a period of liquidation and adaptation. Many people reluctantly give up water, while scientists study animals, public officials constantly evaluate technologies and human behavior that can reduce risks, and predict the next attack, which feels certain.

The origin story of great white sharks gathering in New England is simple. In 1972, President Richard Nixon signed the Marine Mammal Protection Act. With the support of scientists, the bill was part of the landmark environmental legislature of the 1960s and 1970s-including the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, the National Environmental Policy Act, and the Endangered Species Act ——Reshape the relationship between the country and the natural environment. Resources, and ushered in the protection of ecosystems, wild animals and humans. In its terms, the bill made it illegal to harm any marine mammal in the United States in most cases, and prohibited the import of marine mammals and marine mammal products, thereby closing the harvester market elsewhere.

Biologists cheer for the potential of these protective measures to reverse the bleak trend. When the bill became law, many marine mammal populations collapsed under the pressure of market hunting, habitat loss, accidental fishing gear and other threats, and activists soon began to oppose foreign whaling and seal hunting. Some species, such as the North Atlantic right whale, are already critically endangered. Others endured it in other countries, but were extinct in the United States.

This is the case with gray seals, which can reach a length of 10 feet and a weight of more than 800 pounds in gregarious predators. These animals are clumsy on land and graceful at sea, where they can dive to depths of more than 1,500 feet and stay for an hour, and are highly developed predators, feeding on fish, squid, octopus, and occasionally seabirds or seabirds. Marine mammals. Their comeback, almost invisible at first, was shocking. In 1972, with the exception of rare immigrants from Canada, the United States had almost no gray seals to protect. Fast forward 49 years, and Grey Seals have reclaimed old turf from Maine to Rhode Island.

The 1990s marked a strange moment for the rebound. These animals are recovering, but few people have seen them. The sailor is an exception. Nick Muto grew up in Orleans, Massachusetts. He is now a commercial fishing captain and was fascinated by it early on. "When I was a kid, finding seals on the beach was a big deal," he said. "I remember following a mile and a half to better observe it." Carpenter and luthier Matt Gage also recalled the original indicator. In the 1990s, he was a shellfish fisherman. Every day, he used a clam rake and longboard to run a small boat from Chatham to Monomoy Island, dig a bushel of ships, then covered the shellfish with a burlap bag, and then took his plate to the island. seaside. "There are a few seals around, and we will go surfing with them," he said. "I thought,'Isn't this great? I'm surfing with nature.'" Gage said he would see 8 to 10 seals every time he traveled. A few years later, he surfed among 300 people.

The recent population in the northeastern waters of the United States is estimated to be as many as 50,000 animals. These numbers are consistent with anyone can observe. The east side of Monomoy is now often covered with seals, which is an animal belt lying side by side, there are thousands of them in total. The total population of the Western Atlantic is estimated to be close to 500,000. Long Island has recorded beached grey seal cubs. Adults live in Point Judith, a fishing port in Rhode Island, and set up a small drag station on Block Island. In Cape Surgery, gray seals are almost everywhere. They crowded the entrance to Pleasant Bay, resting in piles on the sandbanks, and wandering around the Chatham Fish Wharf, attracting tourists who gathered to watch.

Where seals are concentrated, great white sharks often follow. "This is a whole new ecology," said Lisa Setter, a biologist at the Provincetown Coastal Research Center. "Sharks and seals are signs of a healthy ecosystem, which is a good thing." But she admits how confusing the return of these animals is to some water users. Not long ago, she said, “The biggest threat in Cape Town is ticks. Now we must rethink how we get into the water because we have a top predator back.”

The first recent attack occurred in late July 2012, when Colorado resident Chris Myers and a teenage son were swimming about 400 yards from Ballston Beach in Truro. A great white shark bit his calf and grabbed his left ankle. Miles yelled when the fish hit and started kicking the fish in the face repeatedly with his right foot. "I can feel my heel hit its nose and teeth," he wrote in the Boston Globe. "What I kicked was a huge immovable thing-like an underwater refrigerator covered with skin." The shark let go. Miles full of adrenaline is free. The fish rolled on the water, revealing a huge dorsal fin.

Good luck comes with bad luck. The bite neither paralyzed Miles nor caused unstoppable bleeding. Although he and his son were unarmed, the shark did not flinch. They swim on the waves, and people help them get ashore. The bite-a type of bite that scientists call "exploratory"-tore Myers' calf and severed tendon. A few days later, he was checked out from a hospital in Boston with tangled legs.

In August of that year, the Cape Town community established a regional shark working group to strengthen public safety around the great white sharks. Its members include representatives from the Cape Cod National Coast, local emergency responders, the state’s Department of Marine Fisheries and the Atlantic White Shark Conservation Association. The Atlantic White Shark Conservation Association is a new non-profit organization dedicated to research, education, and advocacy. Large wild animal species to protect the white shark. The working group has no budget and no power in Cape Town as a whole, but it positions itself as an advisory body that can study measures taken in other areas with large shark populations and make thoughtful recommendations to beach towns.

Two summers after Miles was bitten, in September 2014, two women, Christine Orr and Ida Parker, were kayaking in Cape Cod Bay near Plymouth. They began to enjoy the cool nights and photographed harbor seals, which also rebounded for conservation. These animals often rest on the boulders near the stage point. Orr and Parker stood side by side about 100 or 150 yards offshore, enjoying the company of curious seals in about 15 feet of water. There is almost no wind. The blue water reflected the blue sky. Parker reached out and took the camera from her friend.

A great white shark hit Orr's kayak. The impact pulled her up from the cockpit and overturned Parker's kayak. Orr and Parker found themselves face to face with the big fish. Parker saw his nose, eyes, and gills one arm away. He bit Orr's kayak with his teeth and pushed it nearly five feet above the water. Then it was gone. Orr managed to climb back to her boat, and now her boat is leaking through the perforations in the hull. Parker stayed in the water, unable to right her overturned kayak. The current took their oars and stranded them on the bay.

They called for help on the beach. Orr remembered her phone call. It was in a dry bag on her ship. She uses Siri to dial 911. "We are trapped in the water, there is a shark," she told the operator, who seemed to suspect her. A waiting ordeal began. A few minutes later, a man drew out from the shore. They warned him to pay attention to the sharks, only to hear him tell someone casually on the phone that he did not see evidence of the attack. When the Plymouth Harbor Master and firefighters arrived on the boat, the people who pulled them on board ignored them; the dispatcher did not tell them there were sharks. Orr and Parker said that they acted as if the two women capsized and then became hysterical. "They were like,'You need to stop crying, your body temperature is hypothermia,'" Orr recalled. After taking them aboard, the port master slid Orr's kayak onto the deck, revealing a bite mark about 18 inches wide. "I told you!" Orr said.

Just like Miles before, Orr and Parker were lucky: their vulnerability was very serious, but the sharks did not attack again. After measuring the bite, state fisheries officials told them that they had survived a predatory attack by a shark that was 12 to 14 feet long. When I was young, every woman was fascinated by great white sharks; Orr wanted to be the first person to swim without a cage. The attack made her afraid of swimming in dark water, including in lakes. "I can tell you that the white shark knocked you out of the kayak and floated in the dark water without fear, nothing, not even approaching," she said. Parker said her heart beats faster and her chest tightened while swimming, but "I have tried to restore the relationship with the water", although she can still swim and kayak in shallow water. Both women are child therapists and have a nuanced understanding of trauma. They adopted an accommodating attitude towards their reactions and attacks. "It was an honest mistake for him because he thought I was a seal," Orr said of the shark. "If he wants to eat us, he can eat."

The year of the attack, in 2014, Nina Lanctot was 22 years old and worked as a beach lifeguard for five years. This period coincided with the transformation of wildlife. The change began gradually—rankotot saw her first great white shark at least three years ago—but soon the presence of sharks seemed to increase exponentially. It seems that every year more seals roam the coastline and more white sharks hunt them. "The sharks will come directly to the beach," she told friends. "You can really jump on their backs." The seal carcass was washed away by the cut meat. After the lifeguard found the shark in the waves, he often whistled to let the swimmers in. She wants to know why beach workers in all towns have not received trauma training, why no one solves the dead end problem in the mobile phone service required to make 911 calls, and why the supervisor does not have tourniquets and infusions of blood clotting compounds at the lifeguard station Bandage. She came to the disturbing conclusion: more attacks are inevitable, towns and national coasts are not yet ready, she needs to be prepared. She wears her tourniquet and bandage every time she shifts and surfs.

The public awareness and safety measures recommended by the Shark Working Group came into effect. The Town and Park Service installed signs to remind visitors of the presence of white sharks and the risk of rapids and dehydration and sunburn. The beach community has spread the "shark smart" water tricks, including avoiding swimming with seals, or swimming alone, or in muddy water, or swimming near schools of fish. The reserve has gained status and influence, underwriting science, writing shark-related courses for schools, and promoting shark protection information. In 2016, it released an app called Sharktivity, which provided near real-time locations of shark sightings (and eventually marked the sharks through the sound wave signal transmitted by the nearshore transceiver). The application is very popular. But it is not a fully feasible warning system, because sighted and marked sharks account for only a small part of the shark population, and transceivers exposed to waves and natural environments are easily damaged. (This year's Nauset and LeCount Hollow transceivers stopped working in July; the technology is new, and it was used as part of the Cape Town State trial.) A new shark awareness flag began to fly on the lifeguard station. The purple has the outline of a white shark, which means to register a message: these animals are here.

In August 2017, a great white shark hit a stand-up paddle board at Marconi Beach in Wellfleet. The waves are blocked by brown weeds (called green grass by locals), so it is difficult to see the water. Paddle surfer Cleveland Bigelow is a retiree. He started surfing in Maryland in 1965 when the place he frequented was known as Cleve's Cove. He swam to the shore on the waves, turned and paddled back in a prone position. Just as he stood up, his board stopped, as if it was caught by the bottom. He was confused. There are no rocks here, he thought.

The chessboard rose sharply into the air. According to his statement to the park ranger, the force slammed the skateboard into his lap and threw Bigelow out. The feeling was “like being hit by a car while riding a bicycle.” Bige Luo has never seen the animal that continues to swim. He hurried to the beach, bleeding from his right leg, and rushed to the instructor of the surf school. "Now let the children get out of the water," he said. He suffers from hematoma, cuts on his right leg and abrasions on his left leg. There is a bite mark about a foot wide on the board. A few minutes later, the lifeguard stood on the position of the lifeguard, applied ice to the hematoma and cleaned the wound. At the end of summer, they took off the new shark flag, signed it and gave it to him as a gift. He said it read: "Master of Cliff Bay, death liar." Four years later, Bigelow said he believed he had hit the animal first, not the other way around. He thought the most reasonable sequence was that his board collided with the shark, prompting the shark to bite.

The attacks in 2014 and 2017 were notable because the sharks attacked plastic, not people. Good luck did not last. In mid-August 2018, Dr. Bill Lytton, a computational neuroscientist and doctor at Brooklyn SUNY Downstate, swims south from Longnook Beach in Truro, alternating between sidestroke and breaststroke, moving parallel to the coast in approximately 8 feet of water . He plans to swim for 30 minutes and check his watch approximately every five minutes. At about 20 minutes, there was a sharp pain in his left thigh. A great white shark was tucked under his hip. Litton could see the pale side of the animal's head and one big eye, black like a hockey puck. He had a distorted feeling, as if the animal wanted to turn him over. "It feels like torturing me," he said. He punched its gill cleft, the tendon in his left hand was sharp and intermittent.

The shark let go of him. Litton's thigh was like being scraped by a knife. Six roughly parallel wounds stretched from below his hips to above his knees; at least one reached his femur. Litton noticed blood in the water, but felt alert and strong; somehow, the shark's teeth did not touch the femoral artery, which saved him from losing too much blood. He turned on his back. Within six or eight strokes, a wave drowned him on the beach, and two people he did not know carried him to dry ground. Soon, people put blankets and towels under him and used this temporary rubbish to lift him to an ambulance, which took him on a helicopter and took him to the Tufts Medical Center in Boston. Litton felt taken care of from beginning to end. "It was unexpectedly gratifying," he said, as the plane landed to the hospital. The surgeon starts to work. He woke up a few days later, with a dry mouth, calm, bandaged, and alive.

A month later, a shark killed Medici.

Deep in the knees of Newcomb Valley, Lanktor raised his head from the water, the salt in the sea washed away the salt in the tears, and stared at the sea. Ever since she can remember, surfing has been a refuge for her to exercise, release stress, and hang out with friends. Now she is numb. Cape Cod's surfing is no longer her safe haven. "This is a stranger," she said.

In the next few days, her depression gradually subsided. When she saw the rest, she felt sick.

Twelve days after Medici's death, hundreds of people poured into Wilfleet's elementary school to attend community meetings. Laurie Voke, the founder of a sports marketing company and the mother of four marine lifeguards, puts the blame entirely on government officials, who she believes are more interested in wildlife than promises of safety. She said that the recent attacks were "the result of misguided and outdated government policies" and led to white shark hunts among seal populations and swimmers. This is a hidden excavation of the Shark Working Group, which has six years to cultivate a better state of preparedness. "We all know that someone will be killed by a white shark in the outer cape, but we have not taken any measures to stop it," Walker said. She urged efforts to control the number of seals and limit their fishing locations, and proposed ending the state's fishing ban on white sharks. Gail Sluis followed close behind. She was present when Medici died. "That poor boy looks like a bomb exploded on him," she said, her voice trembling. She suggested installing all-terrain vehicles on the beach to evacuate the victims. Then she responded to Walker's call to reduce the number of seals. The crowd burst into applause.

Daniel Holt, the Wilflett town administrator at the time, replied gently that the culling was illegal. Federal and state regulations protect great white sharks and seals. "I hope this meeting will not get caught up in the debate of'Do we want to culminate the seal population, do we want to find a way to get rid of sharks?'?" he said. "I don't think these are realistic solutions. This requires action by Congress to achieve." Emotions were divided. Dana Franchitto, who was surfing in the Newcomb Valley when Medici was killed, shared that he was also afraid of white sharks. But he expressed anger at the wild animal's "if it moves, kill it" mentality. "Given our record on this planet, the arrogant attitude that we have the right to play God in the ocean shocked me," he said. His speech also received applause.

In the months after the meeting, the Shark Working Group recommended improving first responders and raising public awareness. With the support of the state government's grant of $383,000, new shark warning signs were posted in towns and on the national coast, with more eye-catching pictures, and hemostatic kits, tourniquets and bandages were installed in bright orange boxes along the coast. Orleans upgraded its beach communications. (It previously formed a beach EMT cadre equipped with sand vehicles.) Wellfleet, where Lancto worked, bought a higher lifeguard station and a vehicle to evacuate people in need of medical care, and installed landline phones on the beach. Contact the public safety dispatcher directly. It has also begun to provide up to $100 in reimbursement to guards who purchase polarized sunglasses, which can reduce glare and make sharks easier to see. National Coast has installed phone booths on six beaches to make up for the gap in mobile phone service. The Town and Park Service has also begun training lifeguards for emergency trauma care and providing free training to the public.

At the same time, the working group began to broadcast safety information more effectively. Language becomes blunt. "We manage the wild environment, and we cannot eliminate all risks," said Leslie Reynolds, co-leader of the task force and deputy director of the waterfront. "One of our main messages is to always stay close to the coast. This does not mean that certain things will not happen, but it does mean that we can find you." In practice, this means that the lifeguard will instruct visitors not to enter more than waist Of water. Tourists in 2019 came to the changed beach atmosphere. "In the beginning, we lightly stepped on these signs because we didn't want to scare people," said Suzanne Grout Thomas, who oversees beach safety at Wellfleet. Restarting clearly demonstrates the danger.

Ranko appreciates the urgency. But her fear lingered, and her neglected memory also lingered. She knew Cassandra's pain. She remembers how people rolled their eyes when she talked about the increasing danger and the frustration of carrying tourniquets many years ago, because most beaches did not have them. "How come I can read and understand when I was a teenager, but the town didn't do anything?" she said. The death of Medici changed her way of life. She became a surf nomad and went to Maine or Rhode Island to surf. In 2019, she accepted a job as an operating room technician in Maine and left Cape Town completely in fear.

Scientists speak of "fear ecology," a concept that describes the influence of predators on prey members who will not be eaten but whose strategy of avoiding predators incurs costs. An example might be that seals are foraging near the sea instead of venturing to more abundant feeding grounds near the sea, where they need to pass the challenge of predators if they swim. Although people are not the prey of choice for sharks, this concept also applies to human behavior. After the death of Medici, some surfers switched to stand-up paddle boards, which largely kept their limbs away from the water and provided greater visibility. Others, such as Lankerto, no longer surf on the outer cape. Some people continue to surf but will whistle, so if sharks show up, they can quickly clear people out. Shawn Vecchione, a surfboard shaper, tried to install the Shark Shield on his surfboard, which is a device that emits electromagnetic fields to stop sharks and painted black stripes on the bottom. Some surfers say this is a sea snake that imitates sharks avoiding. colour. (The effectiveness of these measures is still controversial.) The lobster man Sam Fuller stuffed a tourniquet in his wetsuit and started surfing. Rocha, who watched his friend's death, didn't go to the party board. (He is now 19 years old and a first-class soldier in the army.) Swimming from the beach for physical training has become rare. "Except for surfing, I gave up going into the water," said Drew Taylor, who used to swim in open water. Nick Muto, the captain of the 36-foot lobster boat Miss Evelyn, said that the white shark forced him to change the way he and his 7-year-old daughter (his boat is named after her) enjoy home. "I grew up here and I have a good experience," he said. "We swim and surf, and we can go to the sea all summer." As for Evelyn, he said, "I won't let her go over her knees." Khristian Bennett, co-owner of Mooncusser Tattoo and Piercing Studio in Provincetown, stopped completely. Into the ocean. He owns a houseboat called Bait's Motel. The slide used to be very popular, but now, he says, "no one uses it." Adaptation has had a profound impact. "It hovered over the area: worried that sharks would destroy this idyllic place," said Patrick Otte, one of the doctors who tried to resuscitate the Medici on the beach.

This concept is difficult to test, partly because it is difficult to distinguish the effects of the coronavirus pandemic from other changes in the economy or tourist activity. Some residents worry that the seal-shark dynamics will hinder tourism, close businesses and drag down real estate values. The available indicators are contradictory. Simeon Watson, manager of Blackbeard's Bait & Tackle in Eastham, said that as the number of seals soared, a fishing tackle shop where he worked closed because the seals disrupted beach fishing. In the coastal area of ​​Rhode Island where I live, some tourists said that they chose Rhode Island for a holiday in Cape Town because they can enjoy the sea without worrying about sharks. At the same time, housing prices in Cape Town are rising, and roads in Cape Town are still congested outside of summer. Wildlife advocates also talked about the species’ contribution to the ocean-based "blue economy." There is no doubt that these animals have been monetized. The great white shark has become the main element of Cape kitsch, decorating T-shirts, hoodies, hats, corkscrews, coffee cups, bumper stickers, etc. A sticker says "Cape Shark", suggesting that large predators are competing with the fish named after the cape in the public mind. Some companies expressed their understanding of the shark puzzle. Wellfleet Drive-In Theatre will screen "Jaws" in the summer. This 1975 film tells the story of a great white shark terrorizing a beach town.

It will continue forever. Massachusetts issued the White Shark license plates, each of which would donate US$28 to the Conservation Society, and then donate US$40 when renewed every two years. (Double-digit license plates require a donation of $5,000.) Interest can even be measured by tattoos. According to the booking records of Mooncusser Studio, in 2016, its artists designed 10 shark designs for clients. From this year to the beginning of October, artists have tattooed sharks on at least 77 people. "People associate sharks with Cape Cod," Bennett said. (He has his own white shark tattoo on the top of his left ankle.) In addition, sharks and seals are both stars of ecotourism, which guides tourists to take a boat to the animal habitat to observe and take pictures. The cost of six people to participate in a shark trip is approximately US$2,500, which includes a plane to find these animals. Marianne Walsh, director of education for the Shark Conservation Society, said that the conservation society’s August ecotourism had been sold out by June. "There are a lot of people who are fascinated by wild animals, which promotes their tourism industry," she said. "These people are here."

Customer tattoos at Mooncusser Tattoo and Piercing Studio.

None of this has alleviated people's fears. On the day Medici was killed, Wilflett's psychotherapist and artist Sara Moran and her husband were surfing in the Newcomb Valley. Her husband Dean is a carpenter and artist. In 2017, when a shark ate a seal on Marconi Beach, she almost ran into a great white shark feeding. When it shredded its prey, he was about to wade in. "The surface is like this gurgling pot, with ripples and bubbles, turning bright red," he said. After Medici's death, Sara stayed in the water during the warm season until July 2020. When she came back, she felt trembling all over. Around that time, Dean experienced what he called the "Great White Shark Moment." He mistaken a piece of mung bean for a mass of blood when he was at LeCount Hollow. He put his hand on his forehead, made a shark fin-like gesture, and shouted for everyone to go to the beach. "I have a flashback feeling because it's like the red blood bath I've seen before," he said. Sara's understanding of hypervigilance is personal and professional, and she believes that these reactions are natural and even necessary. "I think fear is important," she said. "You don't want to enlarge it, but it exists for a reason, and I don't want to push it away." She has treated several clients who lived because of fear of sharks. "This is really devastating for the locals," she said, "in terms of their relationship with water."

Long before beach vacations and marine sports became the daily activities of the middle class, great white sharks have been firmly rooted in the human mind. In a world where terrestrial predators that can quickly kill and swallow a person are extremely rare, they are the last wild giant animals on the planet, beasts that have not been kept in captivity or isolated by large swaths of wilderness, let alone deposed. In the 19th century, Henry David Thoreau marked the species’ notoriety on Cape Cod, where he wrote that they “sometimes capsize or tear it into pieces to catch Among them." He added: "I have no doubt that one shark for more than ten years is enough to maintain the reputation of a hundred miles of beach." As more and more people spend by the sea, this reputation—has The ancient beasts of ferocious design lurked beyond the place where land meets salt water-more and more. In the words of Australian surgeon Victor Coppleson, great white sharks are "human killers" and "white deaths." s damage". Coppleson is still known for showing how sensational even the medical literature is. In 1961, South African doctor GD Campbell published a medical paper on the treatment of shark bites, describing sharks as sometimes "pathogenic" and "toxic" organisms. "The person bathing must represent a very succulent and easily available Food." When discussing monsters, it seems that any horrible metaphor will do.

In the "Great White Shark", many white sharks like Leviathan chains gather together. One of the white sharks with taste for people attracts Quint’s service. Quint is the captain of a fishing boat with a harpoon gun. Hunt it for a bounty. In 124 minutes, set to an ominous score, the shark killed a woman, a boy, a man in a small boat, and a commercial fisherman, then shattered Quint’s hull and killed him— -The count of carcasses bitten by sharks is equal to the number of the entire Massachusetts since 1751. (Sharks also seem to eat Labrador retrievers, a type of victim overlooked by chroniclers of chaos in the past.)

This description stems from the impressiveness of the species itself. White sharks can grow to about 20 feet in length and weigh more than several thousand pounds. Their mouths are filled with jagged triangular teeth that can cut arteries, break bones, and tear tissue--even wounds that are four or more times the life of their prey, such as gray seals. As hunters, they may be unexpectedly difficult to see. The dark skin on their backs and the light skin underneath merge into the water column. These animals also have sensory organs that can sense faint smells, micro vibrations and electrical changes. The white shark grows and matures slowly; radiocarbon analysis of its cartilage indicates that the largest specimen may be 70 years old. With age, experience follows; many adult white sharks have undergone a shift in foraging, from eating mainly fish to paying more attention to marine mammals, and being methodical in hunting. This summer, one of my son Mick flew over dozens of great white sharks in a drone on Cape Cod. Sometimes the sharks tracked seals, one time when the shark picked up a dead striped bass, and several times when they were on the beach or Surfing. These animals travel with regular movements, exuding alertness, athleticism, and discrimination. They are invisible. With one exception, no one noticed when the animals approached. (When the sharks appeared, Mick warned the beach officials.) This calm movement obscured their almost explosive reserve capacity, and they could break through. According to records, great white sharks with accelerometers swim at speeds of up to 15 miles per hour, many times faster than most people's swimming speeds. Some studies have shown that they can go faster.

Unsurprisingly, species with these characteristics have also attracted exploration and advocacy. Chris Fischer, the founder of OCEARCH, is one of the people who study this species. OCEARCH is a non-profit research organization that owns a 126-foot-long vessel that can sail on shark tag expeditions around the world. He believes that the white shark has been unfairly slandered. He said that these fish are by no means predatory: they are cautious, intelligent and sensitive. Although they are very close to people, they almost never hurt them. Fischer said that a Boogie boarder with fins is a living imitation of a seal, and white sharks will pass by them all summer. "We dressed up like their food, swimming around in their food, but we almost never fooled them," he said. "People would drive to the beach while texting and worry about being bitten by a shark?"

Quantifying the risk of being bitten requires more understanding of the species. But white shark research faces obstacles, leaving many people shrouded in stubborn unpredictability. Except for a few places where white sharks gather, they are hard to find. In addition, because they are difficult to subdue, obtaining samples for weighing, measurement, or diet studies has historically been frustrating. To overcome these obstacles, OCEARCH’s fishermen and rotating team of scientists use bait hooks to catch great white sharks and guide them to the lift, where they insert or attach acoustic and satellite-linked tags, perform ultrasound, collect tissue, blood, semen and Stool samples and then release the shark to swim freely and transmit data. Fischer said the idea is to maximize the research value of each animal. “We have more than 40 scientists conducting more than 20 research projects on every shark we come into contact with,” he said. This year OCEARCH worked in federal waters within sight of Cape Cod before moving to New Hampshire and Canada. To date, its staff have tagged 83 white sharks in the northwestern Atlantic Ocean, including 3 in a day in Nova Scotia. On September 30, one of the fish, an immature female nearly 10 feet long, cruised in Cape Cod Bay. (The ping was shared publicly through the organization's Shark Tracker app.) On October 2, she pinged tightly on the shore of Provincetown.

Anyone can guess when the number of white sharks in Cape Cod will reach its peak, but their presence on the beach has reached a level that no one has seen before. Gage, a former shellfish fisherman, first heard of them in the 1990s. "I have a friend who said,'I just saw a seal eaten by a shark,'" he said. "We were like,'Yes, yes, yes.'" He recalled it as a sign of what was about to happen. In 1997, the federal government banned the retention of white sharks in federal waters on the grounds of slow growth, low reproductive rates, and overfishing, usually from 3 miles to 200 miles from the coast. Some states, including California in 1994 and Massachusetts in 2005, extended protection to offshore areas. These changes have made people realize that the top predator is vital to the ecosystem and is a milestone in the restoration of the reputation of the white shark. How the protection measures affect the number of people in Cape Town is unclear. One fact is indisputable: Deadly tactics designed to reduce the incidence of bites in other countries, especially the deployment of nets and decoy hooks under buoys in South Africa and Australia, are illegal in the United States. If "Jaws" is set in 2021, Quint will have no role.

Greg Skomal with a harpoon in his hand, standing on the pulpit of the Aleutian Dream, a 24-foot-long centrally controlled ship sailing towards the entrance of Pleasant Bay. An airplane circled overhead. The pilot instructed Captain John King to swim towards the captain's sharks ahead.

It was mid-July. Several sharks were milled at the entrance, where the sandbanks are usually packed with gray seals, whose smell drifts to the sea as the tide drops. Sharks seem to be attracted here, just as people are attracted to taco stalls by the aroma.

Skomal was enthusiastic and smiled. He is the most famous shark scientist in Massachusetts. This character is widely known. When we talked on the beach for the first time, a boy interrupted him and asked to take a photo with the shark man. He leads the state's shark research program, the core of which is a project to put complex labels on animals. The plan marked its first shark in 2004, but gained momentum after 2013, when the reserve began to provide resources, such as free use of Aleutian’s Dream and its captain’s gold.

The shark swims slowly ahead. Skomar leans from the 11-foot-long pulpit with a harpoon. At the end of the harpoon is a titanium dart attached to two tags. The first is a cigar-shaped acoustic transmitter designed to send a different code every 60 to 100 seconds for ten years. Whenever a shark with this tag swims within a few hundred yards of the receiver, its existence is time stamped. The second is an orange hydrodynamic container with cameras and sensors that can record the shark's behavior for up to three days, including 11 hours of video, and then float freely for recovery.

On this day, the pilot had led the king (the former captain of a 180-foot-long king crab boat) to several sharks, and the crew found another shark-a male nicknamed Danny, in the state It was marked in 2019 and has since been a seasonal visitor. They also found the body of a gray seal on the beach of Monomoy, and a dead seal floating in the waves. Every hole has a bite. Researchers call the area "Shark Bay." It is located next to the "Colosseum", where white sharks sometimes kill seals spectacularly.

This fish does not seem to be bothered by the boat. The Conservation Society scientist Megan Winton (Megan Winton) immersed the hydrophone in the water to check for ping tags on the sharks. It didn't. King pushed the pulpit forward so that the animal was under Scolmar, and Scolmar slammed the darts with both hands. The shark dashed to the right, revealing the camera housing that was fixed to its back as it accelerated away. The crew cheered. Later, Winton said that the shark was a female shark about 11 feet long. She estimated that it weighed about 800 pounds and was a sub-adult shark with spots on its body.

Over the years, the state’s research ambitions have grown. As of mid-October, it had tagged 276 great white sharks; Winton said 223 tags were still valid. Video analysis also identified 455 great white sharks. Depending on the context, these numbers may feel large or small. More than 450 great white sharks along a short stretch of coastline are enough to shock those who had never imagined such a gathering in Cape Town. However, visual investigations revealed that a small number of sharks were tagged. When my son Mick flew a drone over about 40 white sharks in the outer cape this summer, he did not see any tags. Kristian Sexton has been systematically recording great white sharks with drones for three years. He said he recorded 10 drill tags out of 122 sharks. (Both are excluded from animals whose backs are not visible.)

Regardless of the proportion of sharks carrying pingers, scientists have gathered important insights. The marked data shows when the white sharks are most abundant in the area, some are short-lived, and some are permanent residents in summer. Little by little, the research fills in the gaps and has led to the posting of monthly shark activity maps on every outer cape beach now. Cynthia Wigren, co-founder of the Conservation Society, said that science-based safety guidance helps humans and sharks coexist. "It's all interconnected," she said. "We are working with towns and the Cape Cod National Seashore to obtain information."

There is the potential for fine-grained instructions. Bryan Legare, an ecologist at the Coastal Research Center, maintains a series of acoustic receivers on the seafloor near Truro and Orleans. The receiver records the ping. Truro's array shows the extent of the white shark's existence. In 2020, within half an hour from late June to Labor Day, at least one tagged great white shark was found there. There are 168 hours in a week. In the busiest week of 2020, August 9th, at least one white shark with a label made a noise within 165 hours-basically during the peak tourist season, sharks are constantly appearing no matter day or night. The state government and the Nature Conservation Association also support efforts to learn more about eating habits, including trials of 12-foot-long aerodynamic balloons this summer and fall to try to capture shots of sharks hunting seals. Taken together, these studies can provide information about the presence of sharks in ocean waves, which is related to tidal stages, light levels, and the location of prey when paired with time-series photos.

Despite the promise of science, shark research around Cape Town is divided into several camps to some extent. Great white sharks attract big shots in ways that jellyfish might not, and Skomal and Fischer, the head of OCEARCH, can't get along. Massachusetts refused Fischer’s team’s permission to tag sharks in state waters, and throughout the summer, the state’s transceivers were not programmed to recognize sharks tagged by OCEARCH, which prevented the Conservation Society’s Sharktivity app (which received real time from the state). Data) Notify any sharks with OCEARCH tags in the public system. This further limits the value of the transceiver to popular shark identification tools. (Winton said the system has been updated.) Each party complains about the other's methods and motives. One result was that the New England shark study (which all participants considered important to science and safety) was discordant, torn apart by resentment and turf.

The rest of the world has long tried to separate sharks from humans. Obstacles, nets, bait hooks hanging under buoys, rewards, spotted from sharks on airplanes or overhead — all of these are used elsewhere, but with varying strengths, and the results are mixed. After Medici's death, Cape Town officials were overwhelmed by proposals for animal control and shark detection. These proposals mix the demands of the public with the sales promotion of the product, ranging from sonar-equipped buoys to balloons with cameras that can transmit video to monitors. This measure is similar to long-standing combat outposts in Afghanistan and Iraq. Flying small airship. Some proposals, including any lethal proposals, and proposals to force gray seals to use contraception, were completely rejected. But managers admit that they have little budget or ability to evaluate other people, so they are stumped. "We are open to anything we have to do," said Tony Parker, Orleans Beach Safety Director. "But we are a town beach, not a research institution."

Parker is the former fire chief of the town, and his project is energy that can be done. The fish hook tattoo adorns his right biceps. A white shark with a horned tail frowned from his left. Ten years ago, he yearned for decisive and artificial solutions. "I went to the meetings of all these experts, and the message I got was'You and the shark need to exist together, and someone will be killed from time to time,'" he said. "I can't believe it. I'm an EMT, and it's like:'How can this be? This is predictable, predictable and preventable.'" Experience told him that this problem was much more complicated than he thought. Parker helped to oversee the seven-and-a-half-mile-long sandy, constantly changing coastline, which was very calm on some days, but was violently hit by turbulent waves and swept by offshore currents on other days. The coast is also affected by a large number of weeds. This is not a place where one can expect barriers or probe buoys to function without fouling or damage. After the death of Medici, Orleans upgraded beach medical evacuation services and organized rescue exercises, focusing on rescuing the wounded from the water. Parker is not sure what other plans to propose.

In 2019, the Cape Town Town and Parks Authority and the Reserves commissioned the Woods Hole Group, a consulting company, to conduct a "Mitigation Alternatives Analysis" to help the town decide what to do next. The organization brought a report in October that classified most technical and biological mitigation strategies as illegal, impractical, expensive, inhuman, wasteful, ineffective, vulnerable, or some combination of them. "The findings in this report do not support any particular method or product," the author wrote, concluding that "there is no solution available to ensure 100% safety for individuals who choose to enter the water."

A new non-profit organization Cape Cod Marine Community was shocked. It was established in early 2019 in response to its members' belief that insufficient attention has been paid to how the influx of sharks affects people. It welcomes the report as an idle burger, it recognizes inactivity and lack of imagination, and coincides with the views of those who paid $49,950 in consulting fees. The founder of the organization Heather Doyle (Heather Doyle) said that the number of white sharks on the beach has been out of control. "It's like a mouse in your house," she said. "If you see one, it's 30." She laughed at her group of shark advocates who raised funds or publicly promoted through sharks, but had not taken enough measures other than urging people to stay in shallow waters. To solve human worries. "Participating in it is very cool and very charitable," she said. "But this is not public safety."

Then came the attack in Maine. About 15 years ago, Julie Holowach and her husband Al, who were natives of the Bronx, bought them on the west side of Bailey Island before Julie retired as fashion director. A house. They have five children and six grandchildren. They spend more than five months on the island each year, receiving relatives and friends, and frequenting the Catholic Church. Sometimes triathlete Julie puts on a diving suit, slides into the bay from the neighbor's dock, and swims north to the bay where the lobster boats are moored.

In late July 2020, a heat wave swept Maine and brought severe weather. Julie and her adult daughter Alexandra work at Zoom’s home, and she chooses to take a bath in the afternoon. They swim at an easy speed and talk cordially about 20 yards away. The coastline on the island is steep; the bottom drops sharply to a depth of 50 feet or more. The swimmers approached a cabin, and the tenant Katy Magill worked remotely from the porch.

The huge splash pushed Horowach into the air. Magill saw a strange shape under her. Meaningless. Alexandra walked to a boulder on the shore and called for help. "Are you okay?" Magill yelled back. She and her husband Charlie Wemyss-Dunn pushed a two-person kayak off the beach and rowed out. Horowach’s body was floating on the calm water, with a large wound on his abdomen. Now Magill knew what she saw. Her husband said he would go in and help. "No, no!" Magill shouted. "This is not a heart attack. This is not a boat propeller. Don't go into the water."

A few minutes later, Horowach’s body came ashore. News staff followed closely behind.

The attack shook the coastal area of ​​Maine and reminded the Cape Cod marine community how much it still wants to do. It has been pushed several steps. This summer, Christian Sexton, who is testing drone-based shark observations, developed a light and warning system for the dunes overlooking LeCount Hollow. Whenever a marked shark makes a sound on the transceiver buoy outside the beach, the system will sound an alarm. Heather Doyle invited public officials to participate in the demonstration. She said such alarms are necessary because current systems rely on lifeguards to receive alarms and keep people out of the water. But lifeguards at most beaches are only on duty during peak season working days, and no one answers the alarm in the early morning, evening or autumn. Grout Thomas, Wellfleet’s beach director, said the idea is very attractive to town officials — “in theory it’s great and the price is reasonable,” and suggested the Cape Cod Marine Community, a confrontational upstart, can see safety Gaps missed by professionals.

In the criticism of the status quo of white sharks, the sense of disillusionment is deeply ingrained. Other members of the Cape Cod marine community, including Drew Taylor, refused to rely on non-lethal methods. Taylor proposes to challenge policies and modify federal laws to allow communities to set preferred populations for white sharks and gray seals, and to allow hunting or fishing to reduce their numbers. He said that the intent of the protection law is understandable, but there is a lack of tools to adequately respond to a rebound of this scale. "How can you write a law that permanently protects something?" he said. His views, like those heard in conflicts between humans and wild animals elsewhere, can be summarized as follows: It is perfectly reasonable to find lions, cobras, or white sharks fascinating, but you don’t want hundreds of them to be there. Foraging in the nearby park. He blamed federal policies for promoting biological and social dynamics, forcing people to surrender or turn to dangerous or annoying animals without a doubt. He pointed out that marine mammals enjoy protection that terrestrial mammals do not; for example, the only black bear wandering Cape Cod in 2012 was quickly sedated and removed.

Greg Connors, the captain of the 40-foot gillnet boat Constance Sea fishing from Chatham, said environmentalists and bureaucrats did not fully consider the impact of the recovery of gray seals on people living on the water. He said that seal advocates and scientists did not provide convincing evidence that the historical seal population in New England was as large as it is now, and assumed that all growth was good. He said that at some point, other voices and interests should be balanced with the voice and interests of control. "They never set how high they want to be," he said of the seal population. "It's always more. It's a terrible plan." He said that the role of seals is not just to attract great white sharks; they drive fish to farther waters and steal fish from nets. Lobster captain Nick Muto said the protection of marine mammals is counterintuitive. He asked why the protection measures also apply to North Atlantic right whales (of which 400 animals may remain) and gray seals (about 500,000 in the Western Atlantic)? He was surprised that Medici's death did not change the official position. "I think once someone dies here," he said, "the seals will turn off the lights." Connors and Muto admit that the possibility of modification is very small. This is an assessment shared by their industry organizations. "We don't imagine there will be a culling," said John Paparado, head of the Cape Cod Commercial Fishermen's Union. "Blood on the beach? People will not tolerate this." But the frustration reflects the degree to which one party feels exaggerated and alienated by the other, including many people living on the water.

Andrea Bogomolni, chairman of the Northwest Atlantic Seal Research Alliance, is a project affiliated with the University of Massachusetts in Boston. It aims to improve understanding of the ecological role of seals. She said that the problem lies in the gap between the biocapacity, which is the largest population-scale ecosystem that can support And social capacity, reaching a population size that people cannot bear. Bogomolni said that the law supports the former, and people have a responsibility to adapt to the ecosystem being restored. The adaptation is familiar to her. She grew up surfing in central California, but gave up the sport in Cape Cod in 2008 because, she said, “it became cool.”

Three years after a shark killed Medici, a proposal gained credibility: use drones to observe sharks.

In 2019, Sexton, an engineer with a commercial pilot license, founded a company called Moosh Systems to test drones and artificial intelligence to find and observe sharks. By 2020, his preliminary work with consumer drones demonstrates what amateur drone operators have discovered and what observer pilots already know: shallow waters and sandy bottoms that are common in outer capes, and the black back profile of sharks in most summers Clear, from the above. This is often proven to be true even when the water is rich in green algae. Cruising white sharks can leave trail-like trails through the green algae, and Sexton has learned to follow the trail.

Public safety applications become self-evident. Sexton has seen sharks approaching swimmers more than once, running down the beach and driving people ashore. Over time, he noticed the pattern. Great white sharks, including Wellfleet and Truro, often swim slowly and parallel to the coast. This discovery may be worth flying drones on both sides of a public beach to warn swimmers before the sharks pass. This work is also in line with the principles advocated by shark advocates and government agencies: it is non-lethal and non-invasive, and the information generated has the potential to enhance the understanding of the species. It is also very cheap compared to a reconnaissance plane that costs about $300 per hour.

His efforts ran into trouble. Citing the policy of the National Park Service, the Cape Cod National Coast prohibits drones from taking off and landing from properties managed by the Park Service. This policy is sometimes misunderstood as prohibiting drones from flying over the coastline of the outer cape. When taking off from a town beach in Truro this summer, Sexton was told twice by park staff to stop. He read the rules carefully and insisted that he was not a rogue. He has been flying. The head of the National Coast, Brian Carlstrom (Brian Carlstrom) admitted that the ban only applies to flights departing from properties managed by the Park Service and not to flights departing from private properties or beaches managed by towns. The latter can set rules for drones, like for alcohol use, metal detectors and more.

Like the Cape Cod marine community, Sexton was dissatisfied with the bureaucracy and dismissed parts of the Woods Hole group report. He said that partly based on aircraft tests in other places, the failure to recognize the potential of drones indicates ignorance of local conditions and official inaction. "This report is a betrayal of public trust," he said.

Drones are not foolproof. Their efficacy may be affected by high winds, heavy rain, pilot fatigue and battery life. Sometimes, especially after big waves, the water becomes too turbid to be clear at all. But for most of the summer, Sexton said that a drone paired with a vigilant pilot can notify lifeguards of the shark's approach. "The drone operator will not catch every shark, but under the right conditions, almost all sharks that enter the field of view can be caught, and the field of view can be very large," he said. It can also investigate suspicious sights, such as fins, which are usually great white sharks, but sometimes basking sharks or ocean sunfish, both of which are harmless.

At the end of August, when I met Jody Craven, one of Wellfleet's chief lifeguards, the first question I asked was about drones. Craven is sitting on the ATV in White Crest Beach. He glanced at a bag on the luggage rack. "I have a Mavic 2 in my backpack, which is totally unapproved," he said. "I think there will be some sports in the off-season. At least one drone is installed on each beach and equipped with a well-trained lifeguard to use it." Mavic 2 is a popular consumer drone. Craven bought his with his own money. Grout Thomas, Craven's director, said she is open to drone surveillance. She said that many people ignored the warning signs. Although the medical response has improved, she is worried about future attacks. "I think it's just a matter of time," she said. In this environment, she suggested that officials need an open mind and a humble attitude. "We are not sure whether we are doing the right thing," she said, "because we have never done this before." Parker, based in Orleans, said he plans to incorporate drones into beach operations next year. In August of this year, the town’s beach was almost crowded with sharks and closed several times, even wading to knees. Parker said he supports the practice of protected areas and state governments, but has an obligation to improve security and rely too much on other people's information. He said that drones allow his employees to collect first-hand real-time information.

Call it blindness, acceptance, mental numbness, the result of treatment, or an innate and inevitable impulse in the ocean. Whatever it is, on September 1, Nina Lanctot appeared on the beach where a great white shark killed the Medici three years ago. She returned from Maine, rented an apartment, and worked as an emergency medical technician at the Provincetown Fire Department. She wants to taste surfing in Cape Town again in the summer. One of her previous attempts was on a gloomy, foggy day a few weeks ago. After catching up with the two waves, she stopped.

The clean, hip-high waves crossed the sandbar almost where the shark bit the Medici. The air is warm, the light is soft, and the breeze is gentle. About a dozen surfers lined up on the outer edge. In front is the boarder in Phuket; just outside the two people, paddling the standing board. Kristian Sexton and Sara Moran are among the longboarders. Lanktor appeared, walking along the beach in a sleeveless wetsuit, holding a light blue nine-foot long board in his hand, his nose was light blue, and coated with fresh wax. She is returning to the route she sprinted with a tourniquet in 2018.

She stared at the water for a few minutes. When the lineup disbanded, she was preparing to paddle. Everyone hurried ashore. She read the beach again. "Shark," she said.

Soon, the surfer landed. The only predators that can be seen are a few terns screaming and swimming on a group of sand eels. A paddle board boarder told Lanktor that a great white shark swam past. "Fin is gone," he said. Several surfers left. The others agreed to stay where they were until the sand eel moved on.

After a while, Sexton and Rankot grabbed their boards and walked out. Fear rose rapidly in her. She is scanning for threats. As she stared down, she imagined a shark would rise up and attack. This is not entirely reality. This is the collusion of fear with imagination rooted in experience and facts.

A wave came. Ranko immediately stood up and rode on her right. Then it happened: her mind was quiet, it was the most relaxing sensation she knew, she had an uplifting feeling of floating in the air. For 90 minutes, she switched back and forth between anticipating being bitten by a shark and the joy of the familiar old sanctuary. She feels full of energy, sharpness and contentment. She took wave after wave, practiced her cuts, and rode some ashore. She kept rowing the boat.

Later, Sexton realized that this brief meeting contained unsolvable problems. The waters of Cape Cod will not soon be free of white sharks or humans, and in all his work on predators, he cannot answer the most basic questions. "It was great to see her in the water," he said. "But should we really be in the water? I don't know."

Frankto didn't know either. "It feels really good to be back in the water," she texted that night. Then the old ominousness came back. In mid-October, it was the peak season for white sharks near her home, and she didn't know what to do. When she thinks of surfing, her hands are trembling, her chest tightens, and she struggles to catch her breath. "If there are no sharks here, I will go all out," she said. "I will go out in small waves, I will go out in huge storms, and everything in between. But now is the end of an era, here is a carefree place."

Drone photography assistance from Mick Chivers.

Tattoo photos from Mooncusser Tattoo and Piercing Studio.

"Jaws" stills from the Everett Collection.

CJ Chivers, former foreign correspondent of The New York Times, is a staff writer for the magazine. He won the Pulitzer Prize for Feature Films in 2017 and is the author of two books, including "Warriors: Americans Fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq". Tyler Hicks is a senior photographer for The New York Times. In 2014, he won the Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News Photography for reporting on the massacre at the Westgate shopping mall in Nairobi, Kenya.