Photo: AFP
There were eight incidents at New York beaches last summer that involved sharks biting people. In response, New York Governor Kathy Hochul announced a plan for enhanced shark monitoring for the beaches at Long Island state parks. Can people swim in the ocean this year without the fear of being attacked? According to Ocearch chief scientist Dr. Bob Hueter, who spoke on 710 WOR’s Len Berman and Michael Riedel in the Morning program, the answer is yes-- if they do it wisely.
“Don’t go swimming after dusk and before dawn,” Dr. Hueter told Berman and Riedel. “Don’t go swimming where people are fishing; stay away from that. That’s one of the measures I see the governor putting in, a bigger buffer zone between fishermen and swimmers. I think that’s very smart. The drone thing is okay; I think it’s gonna make people feel safer… We just have to be smart and assess the risk but, unfortunately, I think we have a hard time as a species ourselves assessing risk.”
“Last year was clearly an unusual year,” Dr. Hueter added, “but we’re bringing the oceans back, we’re winning this battle to clean up the oceans, and we have more fish and better water quality than we’ve had for a long time and the sharks are going to be coming with it, and we just have to adapt to that and be smarter how we use the beaches. I think some of these measures are probably pretty smart.”
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