The Top Ten Places To Get Attacked By A Shark In Massachusetts

Before we start the discussion, we want you understand a few facts about the likelihood of suffering a shark attack.

You're significantly more likely to win the Powerball than you are to suffer a shark attack.... shoot, like 30-45 people win the Powerball every year, which is about 50 years worth of American shark attack deaths. More people have put Lindsay Lohan on the D Train to Pound Town than have been killed by a shark this century.

If you're worrying about a shark attack, stop. You need to instead prepare for the lightning bolt strike which- however unlikely as it may be- is much more likely to kill you than a shark is.

This "Top Ten Places" list goes to 10 even though we have had less than 10 shark attacks in Massachusetts white-guy history.

If you ignore reputations and just crunch the actual numbers, I would not be at all surprised to find that the shark which has killed the most Americans is the Loan Shark.

That said, being devoured out of nowhere by a station wagon-sized monster with 250 teeth is nothing that you want to experience. If it can happen, and even if the odds are as slight as can be, there must be steps you can take which will lower those odds in your favor.

One step we can give you, beyond obvious ones like "Never swim if you have just been stabbed," "Do nothing at all seal-like" and "Get out of the water if you hear alternating tuba notes start playing" are simple ones that you probably already know. If you don't know those rules already, there isn't much that we can do for you.

What we can do for you is tell you which beaches to avoid, and why.

1) Monomoy Island, Chatham

If you need the Why for this one, just do a Google Map of the area and zoom in. You'll soon see little black marks all along the shoreline, thousands of them. Those are seals.

Seals are shark food, and everywhere the seal went, the shark was shore sure to go.

This is the gold mine if you like Great White Sharks. It's also a rotten place to swim, especially if you have even one seal-like trait.

Chatham in general is very lucky that sharks don't like People Food. It remains the only viable location on Cape Cod for a sharknado to happen.


2)  Ballston Beach, Truro

In spite of her fearsome reputation, the only recent shark attack on Cape Cod was a 2012 attack on a boogie boarder off of this Truro sandspot.

The victim was 400 yards offshore, near where the seals hang out, and paddling around in a manner that he had no way of knowing would register as "injured seal" to the monster shark swimming under him.

He managed to kick it away before it killed him. He described kicking it as akin to kicking "an underwater refrigerator, with skin." It maimed his leg.


3) South Beach, Edgarton

One of... no, scratch that... THE most famous shark attack of all time went down here. The victim was Chrissy Watkins. She was torn to pieces by Bruce, who is the world's most famous shark.

The fact that the attack which I'm referencing is the opening scene from Jaws will in no way prevent us from ranking this beach right near the top.

Joseph Sylvia State Beach in Oak Bluffs is where the Alex Kintner attack went down, but that one didn't have a nude 1970's chick.

4) Nauset Light Beach, Eastham

The whole run of the Outer Cape is a high risk area, as the sharks who get bored of Chatham can head up the coast for a little variety.

This is one of those beaches that you see mentioned on the news with "was closed after a 15 foot shark was spotted offshore" following it.



5) Manomet Point, Plymouth

This is where the (current) most recent shark attack went down. A porker rose up out of the water and chomped on a kayak, dumping the two pretty kayakers into the water. Concluding that humans taste like a kayak, the shark swam away and left the girls unharmed.

That's a pretty impressive resume line, which is why beaches in Chatham and Wellfleet are looking up at America's Hometown.



6) South Beach, Chatham

When you get attacked by a shark here, he's usually not pleased. When he got his rooming assignment, he was like "Yeah! South Beach! Miami, here I come!" Some older shark then has to take him aside and tell him "You're thinking of South Beach, Miami. You're actually going to South Beach, Massachusetts."

When he arrives, he's pissed. "Hangry," as the kids say.

7) Marconi Beach, Wellfleet

When a shark gets a taste for People Food, you have to start worrying about extenuating circumstances.

In this case, the two areas of concern are 1) "Marconi" looks like "Macaroni." Sharks are unique in that they can make American Chop Suey with actual Americans if they have access to lots of macaroni.

Also, 2) is that "Marconi" implies Italian food. It is safe to imply that he is a picky eater, as he travels up the entire East Coast via tail propulsion to sup on a particular sort of Seal. Developing a taste for Italian food isn't really much of a stretch compared to that.


8) Hollywood Beach, Mattapoisett

Holly Wood (aka Hollywood) Beach is where the last fatal shark attack in Massachusetts went down, in 1936. A boy swimming out to meet a boat had most of his leg bitten off by a juvenile Great White Shark.

Holly Wood should be #2 or #3, maybe even #1A.... but we're going on 80 years there, and you can't live on your past in my magazine, folks.

No, sharks aren't afraid of New Bedford and Fall River. You can just shush....


9) Duxbury Beach, Duxbury

Duxbury seems to have a very lively and burgeoning shark population. She has an impressive stretch of uninhabited beach for seals to crash out on, and the bleedover of seals (and, following the seals, sharks) from Cape Cod looks to up their numbers.

If you're a shark hanging around at Race Point and you decide to see how the seal action is if you swim west for a while, the first beach you'll come to will be Duxbury Beach.

Added bonus: Duxbury Bay is a breeding ground for Sand Tiger Sharks. They're just the friendliest 8 foot flesh-eating shark (with a look which belies the fact that they are not physically equipped to hunt or eat humans) that you'll ever see.


10) Egypt Beach, Scituate

Scituate had the second most recent fatal shark attack in Massachusetts history. It was about 5 miles offshore, I chose Egypt Beach at random. The attack went down in the 1800s, which is why they are ranked #10 instead of #1.

In a story that really should be a movie, a shark swamped a smaller boat and devoured the occupant. The victim's brother returned the next day and caught what is believed to be the same shark. He then put it on display in Boston, and charged people a dime to see it.

Honorable Mention:

- Boston Harbor (home of the first shark attack in colonized New England history)

- Rockport (a fisherman was bitten by a shark here, but he survived)

- West Island, Fairhaven (beaches were closed after a fisherman spotted a shark 50 yards away from swimmers)

- Fall River (one of the two fatal Rhode Island attacks went down in Bristol Harbor, about a mile from her nearest Massachusetts neighbor)

- Nahant (a fisherman was bitten in 1922)

- Cold Storage Beach, Truro (James Orlowski had his leg mauled by a shark in 1996. No one believed him at the time, saying "Shark attacks don't happen on Cape Cod," and intimating that he might have crossed a really ornery bluefish. He got the last word when his attacker was listed as a shark in the Shark Attack Database.

- Dartmouth (another guy who says a shark bit him, but everyone was telling him it was a seal... notable in that the victim didn't go to the hospital until infection set in... which is why St. Elizabeth's Hospital in Brighton, who treated this victim, has had more shark attack experience than more likelier places like Falmouth Hospital or Jordan Hospital)

- Gloucester (sharks follow fishing boats)

- New Bedford (see above, plus they have had shark sightings/beach closings)

- Horse Neck Beach (Westport (has been closed after shark sightings)

- Brant Rock, Marshfield (seal-friendly rockpile offshore)

- Buttermilk/Little Buttermilk Bay, Bourne (a 9 foot shark entered this bay and hung out a while in the 1990s)

Orleans Hurricane Planner

We have two maps from FEMA to check out today. The map above is a Hurricane Inundation map, and it depicts storm surge from a direct hit hurricane visiting Orleans at mean high tide. It also shows what sort of storm would be needed to soak certain regions, which we'll get to in a minute.

The map is from the combined efforts of FEMA, MEMA, NOAA and the NHC. They use the funny-weatherman-titled SLOSH model of storm surge estimation. They do not depict freshwater flooding.

The colors relate to the Saffir-Simpson scale of hurricane intensity, and break down like this:

Light Green = Category 1 hurricane. Hurricane Gloria was one of these, and the offshore Halloween Gale was, too. Although not a tropical system, the Blizzard of '78 did Cat. 1-style damage.

Dark Green = Category 2 hurricane. Hurricane Bob was one of these.

Yellow = Category 3 hurricane. We've only had five of these hit New England since the Other Man arrived in 1620, the most recent being Hurricane Carol in 1954.

Pink = Category 4 hurricane. We've had one in recorded New England history, and it struck in 1635.

Flesh = One Hundred Year FEMA Food Zone. This is the "100 year storm" you hear people speak of, but you have to go pre-Colombian to find them ("going pre-Colombian" means using salt marsh soil samples to look for sand layering associated with large hurricanes). New England has had storms in the Category 4+ level in the 1100s, the 1300s, and the 1400s.

Sorry about Flesh, but my knowledge of color names was and continues to be heavily influenced by whoever was in charge at Crayola in the 1970s.

We shall leave the street-by-street analysis to the reader, who can use the links I'll throw in at the end of the article to zoom in on their own house if it suits them.

Note that you don't need to be in a shaded area to get yourself a quick and sudden Ending. You can have a tree fall on you, have your car washed out in street flooding, step on a downed power line, get purged by looters, enjoy the Robespierre treatment from flying shingles, be summarily executed by National Guardsmen, or even stumble into a sharknado. There's no shortage of ways for you to get Left.

With that in mind, we now present to you the down-there-somewhere Evacuation Zone map.

Remember, you don't HAVE to leave when 5-0 tells you to. Also remember that the cop you read the Constitution to before the storm may be the one who has to fish you out of the drink when the ship hits the fan.

The E-map is easier to read, as it is made up of only two colors.

Red = Get Out.

Yellow = Get the f*** out.

FEMA

MEMA

NOAA

NHC

Hurricane Inundation Maps

Evacuation Maps

Worst Hurricanes To Hit New England

List of all hurricanes to hit New England

Eastham Hurricane Primer: Inundation and Evacuation

Eastham is a tough town to describe when viewed from above. There's not really a word for her shape. You could never sketch a map of Eastham from memory, like you could do with, say, Wyoming.

All of those coves and marshes and tidal creeks and barrier beaches combine to make a tricky hurricane forecast for the Easternmost Ham.

We have two maps for you to peruse. They come from an amalgamation of FEMA, MEMA, NOAA, and NHC. The map at the top of the page, and the ones in the article which look like it, are Hurricane Inundation Maps. They are based on the zany-weatherman-titled SLOSH model.

The Inundation maps are related to storm surge, which is seawater pushed inland ahead of a storm. Some of our past hurricanes have sent ashore some doozies. These maps show where storm surge is forecast to come ashore. They also purport to show how far inland storms of differing intensities will reach.

I'll leave the neighborhood-by-neighborhood discussion to the readers, who can zoom in on their particular house if they so desire by going to this page and clicking around a bit.

The picture quality is rough- I couldn't SAVE AS or PRTSC these pages for some reason which may be drug related, and instead took pictures of my screen with the girlfriend's phone- but a determined reader can figure out what they need to see.

Here is the color code we'll be using:

Light Green = Category 1 hurricane. That's the minimal kind, the weakest hurricane. The Halloween Gale is a good-if-offshore example of this kind of action.

Darker Green = Category 2 hurricane. While the landfall was far west of Eastham, Hurricane Bob was a Category 2 storm when it hit Rhode Island.

Yellow = Category 3 hurricane. Only five hurricanes of this intensity have hit New England since the people from Old England showed up, the last being Carol in 1954. Eastham's population was about 900 back then.

Red = Category 4 hurricane. They're estimating from almost 400 years ex post facto, but the Great Colonial Hurricane of 1635 may have been a Category 4 storm.

Flesh = 100 Year FEMA Flood Zone. This is the "hundred year storm." Brown University scientist-types measure pre-Colombian storm impacts by taking long tubes of marsh mud and analyzing sand layers which could only be put there by giant storms. New England was hit by Category 4+5 storms in 1100–1150, 1300–1400 (1295–1407), and 1400–1450 (1404–1446).

I'm no artist, and I use "flesh" as a color primarily because of whoever was in charge of Color Naming at Crayola in 1970. There's probably a better term. Inundation maps are very egalitarian, and due to their using White as a base color on the map, the "colored" neighborhoods are generally the less-swarthy waterfront-property-owning types of people.

Please note that these maps depict a scenario where a direct-hit hurricane arrives at mean high tide. Also note that they do not show impacts from freshwater flooding scenarios like heavy rainfall, freshwater stream overflow, sewer backups and even sociopaths spraying their garden hoses into the wind for the sheer joy of it.

A few quick notes about the maps:

-  A monster storm will reach inland far enough to cut off Route 6 in a few spots. You should try to be Ghost before that happens.

- Anything marshy will go under in a minimal hurricane.

- The only Flesh colors we see are on the outer dunes, and in a few spots by the fire station.

- I'm probably a bit late to this dance, but you could make a pretty good cheesy horror film about a hurricane flooding Eastham which also pushes sharks ashore to grab people out of The Friendly Fisherman and so forth.

- North Eastham should be called Nor'eastham.

We also have an Evacuation map for you. These are what the authorities use to determine who will be under evacuation orders.

You don't HAVE to evacuate, but that cop you told off before the storm may end up being the one who has to decide whether he should risk his neck to pull you out of a flood.

These maps are a bit easier to read than the Inundation maps. We only have two colors here. Red means Get Out, and Yellow means Get The F*** Out.

You should pay heed to these maps. We want you alive. We need your site visits, we have professional pride ("If they read my column, they'd be alive"), and we also want you alive for regular nice-person reasons.

"I advocate hanging on as long as possible."