See a Great White Shark Snatch a Fish From a Line

Fishermen boating off Cape Cod say something strange has been happening to their catch. Fish being reeled out of the water have bite-shaped chunks missing from their bodies, or in some cases, only their heads remain.

Charter boat captain Hap Farrell has been running fishing tours out of Rock Harbor in Orleans, Massachusetts, for 45 years. He first encountered mangled fish around eight years ago, but over the past three years, he says, it’s become a regular occurrence. And it means one thing: The sharks are back.

“There have been more and more sharks hitting fish. What we come back with is just the head, and the sharks will come right up to the boat, within four or five feet, chasing what’s left,” he says.

This behavior is known as shark depredation, and it refers to the predator removing or damaging a fish while it’s being captured or harvested. Farrell has heard of at least 50 instances of depredation this past summer alone and has himself witnessed juvenile sharks jumping out of the water as they explode upward from beneath the fish.

Once on the brink of extinction in the North Atlantic, white sharks (a name used interchangeably with great whites) have been rebounding over the past 20 years, particularly in the waters surrounding Cape Cod. They’re attracted to the booming population of protected gray seals, which were hunted until the passing of the 1972 Marine Mammal Protection Act. It’s now estimated that between 30,000 and 50,000 gray seals inhabit Cape Cod.

Just like humans, sharks enjoy these coastal waters between the months of May and October. While the chances of an attack are still low (the last fatal attack took place in 2018 and was the state’s first in 82 years), great whites are now easier to spot than ever.

Depredation is usually seen from above the water’s surface, if at all, which is why National Geographic Explorer and photographer Brian Skerry worked with local charter boat captains to capture this behavior underwater. Skerry, a Massachusetts native who has logged more than 10,000 hours underwater photographing the marine world, spent several days this summer trying to film a shark snagging a fish beneath the surface.

On June 29, he finally got the footage he was looking for. In Skerry’s video, a juvenile female great white suddenly materializes from the murky waters, catapulting up from below before turning slightly to grab a fish from the side “like a loaf of bread,” says Skerry. “It was so sudden, it wasn’t even a second. She just rocketed through and then it was over.”

It’s the first time Gregory Skomal, a leading white shark expert who reviewed the video, has seen video showing depredation from underwater. To get this rare footage, Skerry worked with local fishermen, receiving real time updates on where and when depredation was happening.

“My goal was to help people understand that this place, Cape Cod and the Gulf of Maine, has a healthy, recovering population of large predatory sharks, particularly great whites,” explains Skerry. “While a great concern for beachgoers, it is a good thing for the ocean. It is a good thing for the planet.”

Sharks function as ocean architects, and robust shark populations are a sign of a healthy marine ecosystem. As apex predators, they’re responsible for everything from regulating prey populations and transporting nutrients to disease control by targeting weak or sick animals.

Cape Cod’s sharks may seem like newcomers, but they were once abundant in this region. A study published in April showed shark depredation has been affecting anglers and fishermen in U.S. Atlantic waters for more than a century. And writer Ernest Hemingway documented some of the earliest instances of depredation by sharks farther south in the Bahamasin the 1930s. At that time, and throughout the early 20th century, they were a much maligned species hunted in the North Atlantic. That sentiment slowly changed and by 1997, the National Marine Fisheries Service prohibited fishermen from targeting sharks, and Massachusetts followed suit in 2005. Since then, population numbers of great whites have been steadily rebounding in the western North Atlantic, particularly in the waters surrounding Massachusetts.

Depredation, however, is concerning shark conservationists, who worry the behavior could drive a new outbreak of human-shark conflict. While there are no official figures for how the behavior is affecting local industries, fishermen fear shark depredation could cause financial losses for commercial and recreational fisheries due to lost catch, damaged fishing gear, and the potential loss of clients for fishing charters.

“There's not one fisherman on the eastern seaboard that isn't complaining about it,” says Skomal, who also works as a senior marine fisheries scientist at Massachusetts Marine Fisheries. He adds that many view sharks as a threat to their livelihoods.  “They’re blaming the sharks, and they’re blaming the restoration of shark populations.”

To address these concerns, a recently signed executive order directs federal agencies to create a depredation task force that will monitor depredation rates in real time. That’s in addition to a strategic committee created by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) last July, aimed at investigating and limiting shark depredation. NOAA plans to tag sharks in “high depredation risk areas” with acoustic pinger tags that will follow their movements for a year, monitor depredation rates at certain sites, and test shark deterrents, such as electromagnetic devices.

These efforts to reduce depredation will come with their own set of challenges. “It’s basically the same as mitigating shark bites on humans, so it’s going to be very difficult. There is certainly no silver bullet,” explains Skomal. However, he thinks the strategic committee is a good idea because it will pool together the expertise of scientists working across several state agencies, private research institutions, and universities while also making charter captains feel that their concerns are being heard.

Until a solution can be found, people and sharks will continue fishing in the same waters. A 2023 study revealed that about 800 great whites visited the waters off Cape Cod between 2015 and 2018, suggesting that the area now has one of the world’s largest and densest seasonal great white populations.

Cape Cod fishermen typically identify juvenile great whites, measuring fewer than 10 feet long, as the ones preying on their catch. An adult male gray seal can grow up to 10 feet long and weigh over 800 pounds, which means younger and smaller great whites don’t have the experience or the size to hunt them.

While a hooked striped bass may be an easier target, juvenile great whites ambush the fish much in the same way they would prey on a seal. “They’ll either come in from the side or from underneath, grab the fish, spin around, and then flip their tail towards you,” says Doug Brown, a charter captain who also operates out of Rock Harbor and has been fishing off Cape Cod since he was a child. Brown says he’s seen sharks jump out of the water as they hunt. “And when they do that, they’ll often clear the air. Their whole body’s out of the water, and they flip,” he says. Brown personally experienced some 15 instances of depredation this past summer.

Emerging evidence suggests that some shark species may be connecting fishing activity, namely the sound of engines or the discarding of undersized fish, with the opportunity for an easy meal. “Sharks are creatures of habit, so if a shark successfully feeds in an area where it can associate the capture of those fish with, say, engine sounds, they can become trained almost like a dog,” says Skomal. “They'll place themselves in those areas where those opportunities may occur again and again.”

Out on the water, Brown has observed this behavior firsthand. “It’s a very, very easy target. They hear our diesel engines and they just know. It’s like ringing the dinner bell,” says Brown.

According to Farrell and Brown, Cape Cod charter captains seem to have mostly accepted the fact that white sharks are now part of daily life for five months of the year. Still, there are grievances. “They’re mostly just pissed off because we’re losing so much tackle. The sharks will attack the tubes and umbrella rakes without a fish. They tend to eat a lot of our tubes and worms and hoochies,” explains Brown, who has started buying extra hoochies, plastic lures that look like squid, each time he goes out on the water.

With such regular shark encounters, some enterprising locals are using shark sightings to fuel a thriving white shark ecotourism industry. Several companies offer dedicated charters to see the apex predator up close.

For Farrell’s charter customers, the experience of losing a striped bass to the species is a thrill. They often eagerly ask if they’ll get to see a shark during their excursion, and when they do, Farrell says, “Oh, they get so excited, it makes their trip. They think it's the greatest thing on Earth. They love it.”