A National Geographic photographer filmed a juvenile great white shark snatching a hooked fish off Cape Cod, and local fishermen say the thefts keep rising.
On June 29, explorer and photographer Brian Skerry captured underwater video of a young female great white racing up from the depths, biting a fish off a line, then turning and swimming away off the Massachusetts coast.
Skerry, a Massachusetts native with more than 10,000 hours underwater, had spent several days working with local charter captains in high-depredation water before he got the shot. The behavior is called shark depredation, a shark taking a hooked fish before the angler can boat it, and the footage is described as the first time this snatch was filmed underwater.
He told National Geographic how fast it happened.
"It was so sudden, it wasn’t even a second. She just rocketed through and then it was over."
Charter captains around Cape Cod are not treating this as a one-off stunt video. They say great whites have been stealing fish more often over the last three years, and the losses hit the wallet.
Local captain Hap Farrell put the pattern in plain terms.
"There have been more and more sharks hitting fish."
Farrell said crews often haul back only the head. He has heard of at least 50 depredation incidents in one recent summer alone. The sharks, he said, will even push right up to the boat.
"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."
The thieves are usually juveniles under 10 feet long. For a young shark, a fish already hooked and thrashing is an easier meal than a full-grown grey seal.
Cape Cod’s coastline now holds an estimated 30,000 to 50,000 grey seals. Adult seals can top 10 feet and 800 pounds. That herd grew after the 1972 Marine Mammal Protection Act barred hunting them.
More seals mean more bait in the water for white sharks. Recent research cited in the coverage counted about 800 great whites visiting waters off Cape Cod between 2015 and 2018. The sharks show up when the water warms, roughly May through October.
North Atlantic white sharks had nearly been wiped out; their numbers are climbing again. That recovery is good news for the species. It is harder news for working boats that now share the same grounds and lose catch and gear when a shark decides the line is a free lunch.
Gregory Skomal, a senior marine fisheries scientist with Massachusetts Marine Fisheries, said the frustration runs far beyond one harbor.
"There's not one fisherman on the eastern seaboard that isn't complaining about it."
He added that crews are pointing at both the animals and the policy success that brought them back.
"They’re blaming the sharks, and they’re blaming the restoration of shark populations."
Human attack risk off Massachusetts remains exceptionally low. The state’s last fatal shark bite was in 2018, its first in 82 years. Conservationists still worry that rising conflict with fishermen could spill into pressure on protections for the sharks themselves.
Depredation is not brand new. Ernest Hemingway recorded sharks stripping fish in the Bahamas as far back as 1930, and researchers say the habit of stealing from lines and nets goes back more than a century. What is new off Cape Cod is the frequency, the seal-driven shark traffic, and clear underwater proof of a juvenile white shark finishing an angler’s work in a fraction of a second.
Great whites run about 15 to 20 feet long in full size, can weigh well over a ton, and hit bursts near 35 mph. Their conservation status is listed as vulnerable. None of that changes the dockside math: when the shark gets the fish, the boat gets the head, the damaged leader, and the lost income.
Protected seals drew the sharks back. The sharks found an easier meal on the end of a working line. Fishermen are left holding the bill for a recovery plan they did not write.
