You know you're doing well when your pics are pre-captioned
A quick rich-person house.
We went out on a cloudy day, unfortunately...
One thing that I like bout Chatham is tht it is sort of the End Of America. If you were going to physically kick someone out of America, you'd mot likely do it from Chatham.
In case you haven't heard, Cape Cod has a shark problem. It's not really a "problem," and is in fact a sign of a healthy ecosystem, but a tourist-dependent beach destination with Great White Sharks offshore is a soon-to-be non-destination. All it would take is one fatal shark attack on a human to get the ball rolling.
There's not much we can do about it that doesn't involve a wanton act of mass-production animal cruelty. A mass culling of the Cape Cod seal population would be needed, as seals are what the sharks come for. We could also kill the sharks, which are currently protected under federal law.
Or we could just let nature take her course, as people say. Nature works in many mysterious and wonderful ways, and one of these Ways may be taking place just offshore.
A charter fisherman about ten miles off of Chatham spotted an Orca yesterday. We don't mean Quint's doomed boat when we say "Orca," we mean "Killer Whale." It most likely wandered down from the Bay of Fundy, and is relatively unusual in Cape Cod waters.
Another thing that was unusual for a long time on Cape Cod was the presence of a multitude of Great White Sharks just offshore. However, this soon (and by soon, we mean "a couple of years") considered to be the new normal. Why not Orcas?
Orcas do come to New England. The Coast Guard cutter Campbell came across a pod of killer whales about 150 miles off Nantucket in 2014. Experts blame melting Arctic ice and associated whale-food-related problems.
"Don't tell Old Thom that I'm here, OK?" (photo, by our England correspondent Jodi Turck, of seals off Clacton-on-Sea, England)
I'm no marine biologist, but I read 30 minutes of whale stuff, and I'll tell you what I gained from it.
- The whale in question is almost certainly Old Thom, a whale who tends to stray from his fellow killer whales up in Labrador and Newfoundland. He has been spotted in the Bay of Fundy a few times recently.
- Old Thom is about 30 feet long and weighs 8 tons.
- Old Thom comes from a population of whales who don't hunt seals. His peeps prefer to hunt and eat dolphins and Minke Whales. His fellow whales are Specialists, which means "whales that only eat one kind of food."
- This sort of takes the steam out of "Maybe the killer whales will eat all of the seals and end our associated Great White Shark problem."
- A Dr. Hamilton at the New England Aquarium scoffed at the idea of sharks and whales doing the Batman vs Superman thing off of Monomoy. He laughed and said "Maybe in fantasy land" when the Boston Globe asked him about it.
- Scientists laughed and said "Maybe in fantasy land" fifteen years ago if you asked them about Great White Sharks making a summer home off Cape Cod.
- Cape Cod has adequate dolphin and Minke Whales (named for Meincke, a Norwegian sailor who mistook one for a Blue Whale and has been goofed on ever since over it) population to keep Old Thom very well fed.
- Minke whales are usually what you see if you go on a Cape Cod whale watch.
- I have no idea if any (or how many) Minke Whale beachings were a Minke choosing suffocation over being eaten by an Orca.
- Though not listed as an Orca food item, a Beluga Whale got itself into the Taunton River in Fall River and hung out for a few days in 2014. Killer Whales have been spotted upriver in Japan and even in the Columbia River in the US.
- A whale who specializes in seals may not even recognize a fish as a food item, and the same probably goes for whales who eat other whales.
- From what I have gathered, it would be very unusual for Old Thom to buck evolution and change his diet to seals.
- Still, Old Thom could be useful. The one thing that a Great White Shark fears is a Killer Whale.
- Orcas can and do eat anything they want. There are cases of a pod taking out a juvenile Blue Whale. Adult sperm and blue whales are the only whales that an Orca wouldn't cross. Even a large adult GWS is no match for an Orca.
- This website once jokingly suggested that we solve Cape Cod's shark problem by building robot killer whales to patrol the coast off of popular resort beaches. It looks like we could get to test that theory out.
- Several instances have been recorded where an Orca killed a Great White Shark. I have never read of a GWS beating an Orca, and I'll let you know right now that I am researching a future article (tentatively called "Massachusetts Animal Fights: Who Wins?") on which animals in our region can whip ass on which other animals. "Great White vs Orca" just went to the top of that article.
- An Orca holds several advantages on a Great White Shark in a fight. They are almost twice as long as a GW, and often weigh 4-8 times as much as one. Orcas hunt in packs, and will focus on a big fish like a shark if they wish. They are much stronger. They are also much more intelligent, using an amazing knowledge of shark biology when fighting one.
- In combat, an Orca who gets a hold of a GWS will turn it upside down. This induces a state of paralysis called "tonic immobility" in the shark, who is then torn to pieces by the Orca. A victorious Orca will eat only the liver of the shark, and let the rest of the carcass sink to the bottom.
- A tagged Great White Shark who was in a group of sharks that a pod of Orcas attacked off the San Francisco area was observed to immediately dive to 500 feet and swim non-stop to Hawaii.
- Again, Old Thom isn't from a population that A) eats sharks or B) eats seals, which would put Old Thom into competition with sharks.
- Our sharks here on Cape Cod may or may not know that.
- If Old Thom gets closer to shore and smokes a Porker, it may drive other Great Whites away.
- Old Thom poses almost no threat to humans, with one huge exception. To my knowledge, there have been three attacks on humans by an Orca.
- One involved an Orca bumping a child who was swimming. The child was uninjured.
- Another case involved a whale biting a bag of fish that a diver had tied to his arm, and he dragged the diver around for a minute.
- A surfer at Port Sur, California was bitten and released by an Orca, and this is the only case documented where a wild Orca attacked a human. The surfer required 100 stitches.
- These three incidents are all that they have documented. Killer Whales range all over the world, and only three attacks have been recorded on humans... and only one of them was a "real" attack.
- An Orca in captivity is a different story. Dozens of trainers have been attacked. Even the well-known Shamu bit a woman, giving her 200 stitches.
- I have never heard of nor have I been able to find any documentation of Killer Whales in Cape Cod Bay. Larger whales than the Killers wash upon South Shore beaches all the time.
- The chances that a pod of Killer Whales will colonize New England is very small, but not impossible, Killer Whales roll in pods, and it must take a bit of convincing to get them to say "Screw Newfoundland and Minke Whales... let's go to Cape Cod and start eating seals."
- If a pod of Killer Whales took up residence on Cape Cod, however, they would stand a good chance of scaring our sharks away. We would then get an Apex Predator Upgrade, with the added bonus of losing an AP that attacks humans and gaining one that will only attack you if you try to force him to bounce a ball on his nose at Sea World.
- Great White Sharks vs Orca is probably not going to be happening here, but it is something to think about if we start seeing more of Old Thom and his buddies in the waters off of Monomoy.
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)
Chatham is, if you view Cape Cod as a big fist being shaken towards Europe, the Elbow. Like any other elbow, it's gonna get banged off things now and then. In this case, instead of a table, its a Hurricane.
There are no imminent storms, Chatham is just next up to bat in our ongoing series.
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 Chatham 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.
Zoomed out... blurry, but anything unshaded is flooded....
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.
This year's Barnstable County Fair was a blast. There were many things to do and see there. It was nice to see some returning vendors and acts and also nice to see new ones, The Barnstable County Fair is located in Falmouth Massachusetts (Cape Cod, MA).
The BCF has been coming to town since 1844. It was originally a livestock/crafts sort of fair, and that is still a big part of the show today. They didn't have electric ferris wheels or anything like that back then, maybe they used horses or something, I have no idea. The big draw early on was the merry-go-round.
Other than a brief shutdown during WWII, the fair has been going strong ever since. They have since incorporated spectacuar rides, and have brought in performers and other acts.
One of my favorite acts was Wacky Chad with his Pogo stick tricks. He has been on America's Got Talent... twice!
The animals and petting zoo have always been a nice thing to look forward to. This cow is trying to go viral, I saw him practicing that look in front of the mirror before I shot.
Who wouldn't want to feed a goat or a yak out of the palm of your hand?
If you were at the the fair you may have noticed the baby animatronic T-Rex. He was about half-done eating this old guy when I asked him to pose for me.
The Three Dog Night performance was spectacular, my phone's video recorded it in poor quality. I guess you'll have see them in person to get the real deal. We were so close to the stage that we could feel the beat through our entire bodies. I was so psyched to see them perform in person. Their hits include: "An Old Fashioned Love Song" featured in the video below, "Joy to The Word," "Shambala" and many, many more.
We can't forget about the rides and the amazing view of the fair from the Ferris wheel.
I saw a little bit of the Lumber Jill's Performance - wish I had a better view (I was too short to see over everyone else). And I was really hoping to see the Willis Clan.
