Native plants for a Cape Cod garden

A shark off Chatham, in the midst of winter? Strange. A great white, you say? Impossible! I heard it at a bar first, so my initial thought was this had to be a rumor, and definitely untrue. However, the source – Jim, does not usually make up fish stories. He is serious when it comes to information. He plays trivia too, rather well in fact. To me that is enough reason to take Jim’s words at face value. But it did not make sense, still. My curiosity piqued, I decided to get to the bottom of this and I did some research. It took some doing, since none of the usual news channels and sources had anything on this giant Chatham fish. Eventually, I did find the story confirmed on the CapeLinks blog: http://www.capelinks.com/blog/monster-shark-a-great-white-christmas-on-cape-cod/.

A lot of mystery remains, however. Was the shark alive before it got stuck in the net? Or did it die many months ago before its brethren (or sisters) went to Florida (the opinion of the CapeLinks blog writer)? Knowing the job crabs and assorted creatures do on carcasses, I think this Carcharodon carcharias expired only recently.

To find a great white in our waters this time of the year is very unusual, especially considering the water is barely 40 degrees this time of year. But then again, wouldn’t you brave the cold if a veritable buffet of seal meat were available year-round?

Great whites have been seen near the Chatham beaches in the presence of rich game like the forementioned seals. It is not a coastal species, however: It is an open-ocean dweller that has been recorded at depths of around 1,220 m (4,000 ft). The fact that they swim in deep water may explain why this specimen was found in colder water.

Equally unusual is the size of this particular fish. Despite the mega-fish portrayed in movies, 20 feet is up there. The largest white shark reliably measured was a 6.0 m (19.7 ft) individual reported from Ledge Point, Western Australia in 1987. Another great white specimen of similar size has been verified by the Canadian Shark Research Center, and this was a female great white measuring 6.1 m (20 ft) long. An even larger great white shark specimen was found to be 6.4 m (21 ft) long and had a body mass of about 3,324 kg (7,330 lb).

The fishermen who netted this creature did not bring it ashore, so we will never know what ultimately killed this animal, and why it lingered so long in our cold Cape waters.