In this July 25, 2016, file photo, released by the Atlantic White Shark Conservancy, a great white shark swims close to the Cape Cod shore in Chatham, Mass. In a February 2017 update to a multiyear study, Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries' top shark expert Greg Skomal said researchers using a plane and boats spotted 147 individual sharks off Cape Cod in the summer of 2016. (Wayne Davis/Atlantic White Shark Conservancy via AP, File)
Great white sharks are discovering what tourists have known for years: Cape Cod is a great place to spend the summer.
Greg Skomal, the top shark expert at the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries, says the latest data from a multiyear study of the ocean predators found that the number of sharks in waters off the vacation haven appears to be on the rise.
But that's no reason to cancel vacation. The sharks are after seals, not humans. The last documented fatal great white shark attack in Massachusetts waters was in 1936.
Researchers using a plane and boats spotted 147 individual sharks last summer.
That's up slightly from 2015, but significantly more than the 80 individual sharks spotted in 2014, the first year of the study.
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