ORLEANS, Mass. — As the rain thrummed on the roof of the harbor master’s office, Natural Resources Manager Nate Sears was seated behind a computer screen. He said he was relieved that the summer had gone by without any shark attacks on humans.

For eight of the last 12 days leading up to Labor Day, beach rangers and lifeguards had to order swimmers and surfers out of the water as sharks cruised by popular Nauset Beach. On all but one of those days, it was a spotter plane being used by researchers to locate sharks for tagging, not lifeguards, who saw the predators.

State shark scientist Greg Skomal said great whites were on the move in late summer shifting from their primary feeding grounds off the Monomoy islands south of Chatham to Outer Cape beaches to the north. By September, his spotter plane saw few sharks south of the Nauset Inlet. Skomal wasn’t sure why, perhaps a subtle change in water temperature or the fact that significant numbers of seals had also moved north to congregate on sandbars along Outer Cape beaches.

For those two weeks it seemed like Nauset Beach was on some kind of great white shark highway. The spotter pilot wasn’t just seeing a single shark, but two or three in the same area. He even circled low to warn surfers. In some cases, surfers refused to leave the water even though there were sharks on both sides of them. They later told beach officials they felt safe because the plane was there.

Despite all the stories on the number of sharks sighted, there hadn’t been an attack on a human on the Cape since 2012. Still, he worried about the attack on two kayakers in Plymouth last September while they were paddling near seals.

“People were becoming desensitized (to the presence of sharks),” Sears said. “Eventually, the sharks will make a mistake.”

‘A FALSE SENSE OF SECURITY’

Sears says he was convinced that if the plane been up every day, instead of just four days a week, they would have had to close beaches to swimming 12 of 12 days. Although most sharks were seen in 8 to 10 feet of water, 60 or more feet from shore, it was well known from Skomal’s research that they routinely came in closer in pursuit of seals. In fact, three great whites beached themselves this summer, including a 14-footer on Wellfleet’s White Crest Beach.

Sears was alarmed at the idea of sharks 12 feet or longer consistently cruising by his beach unseen, potentially hunting seals in and among swimmers, and he decided Orleans needed to overhaul its shark protections.

“I realized we are giving people a false sense of security,” Sears said. “People were thinking that if we’re not stopping people from going in the water, then it must be safe.”

“Nothing could be further from the truth,” he added.

Sears worried that, without knowing when sharks were there, his decisions or those of other beach personnel could lead to tragic consequences. While they followed the protocol set up a couple of years ago to keep people out of the water for at least an hour after a shark had been spotted, he had no confidence they could see one unless the spotter plane was flying overhead.

“Who am I to say that after an hour it is safe to go back in the water?” Sears asked.

‘LOADED WITH SEALS’

A little farther up the coast, National Seashore Chief Ranger Leslie Reynolds was facing a slightly different problem. Coast Guard Beach in Eastham was not just on the shark highway, it was proving to be an attractive rest stop for seals and a feeding station for great whites. Consistently named one of the top 10 beaches in the U.S., it drew thousands of beachgoers every day in summer, especially those wanting to use its big sandbars for body surfing, surfing and paddle boarding.

But, for the past three years, the beach has hosted a seal haul-out – where they congregate after feeding to rest on the sandbar and warm themselves in the sun – that is adjacent to the protected swimming area. While lifeguards and volunteers kept people from walking out on the sandbar itself, the presence of hundreds of seals did not go unnoticed by sharks, with at least two attacks on seals close to shore while the beach was open.

“That bar has been loaded with seals,” Skomal said, estimating there could be as many as 300. “At high tide they all end up in the water and many stay there.”

As the sandbar floods with the turning tide, the seals start up a doleful moaning sound and re-enter the water – often in groups of 20 to 50 or more – and swim along the beach.

With hundreds of seals in the water around them, surfers and paddle boarders began seeing attacks on seals nearby. While they always knew that there was some risk of shark attacks, many felt what was going on at Coast Guard Beach was on another level.

“As surfers we felt uncomfortable with so many seals around,” said Phil Clark, owner of Nauset Sports and an avid surfer and paddle boarder. He said many decided to move up north to Marconi Beach in Wellfleet to get away from seals and sharks.

“Coast Guard is closer and better (for surfing). I’m angry I had to leave it,” said Clark, who was also worried about water quality with all the seals concentrated into small channels between the sandbar.

“Having seals hauling out on those sandbars, that close to the protected beach, is a very big concern,” said Reynolds. The park put volunteers on the beach near the haul-out to educate people on the risk of getting close to seals. She also had signs placed at the beach warning that sharks were present and seen feeding on seals.

‘WE NEED TO BE EDUCATED’

In Orleans, Sears scoured the Internet and other sources for help, discarding ideas as varied as a 60-foot-high tower to give lifeguards a better view of the water, drones and balloons equipped with cameras, and a device that creates an electromagnetic field around the swimming area. Instead, he was preparing what he called a more realistic budget proposal to bring to selectmen that included building two additional large lifeguard stands, each with a widow’s walk on the top that he hoped would help with shark sightings.

He was considering adding another emergency medical technician to patrol the southern off-road trails where there were at least four attacks this summer on seals in the channel next to a sandbar that is a popular surf spot.

Sears was also proposing that Orleans contribute to the Atlantic White Shark Conservancy, the nonprofit group that is the main funding source for Skomal’s great white shark research. He said the town benefits not only from the researchers’ spotter plane, but their scientific information. Although they rely on Skomal’s group for valuable information on where sharks are being seen, towns and the Cape Cod National Seashore haven’t contributed any money toward what is largely a privately funded effort.

“We need to be educated on what is going on offshore,” Sears said, in making a case for Orleans to be the first municipality to do so. He said he was hoping that more funding might lead to more sharks being fitted with acoustic tags that send a signal to receivers moored in shallow waters along the Outer Cape and Nantucket Sound.

Real-time monitoring, in which the shark signal would be relayed to cellphones, is the ultimate goal, Sears said. He would also like the scientists to develop an educational film for local channels that would give people more information that he hoped would lead to better decisions about where and when to go into the water. He is also planning to increase the shark signage on beaches and to fly a flag at all times that makes it clear that sharks are there and can be there at any time.

‘KIDS AREN’T GOING TO SWIM HERE’

Still, all the shark closures didn’t affect business. Parking records at Nauset Beach showed no drop from previous years and a record Labor Day beach attendance, said beach supervisor Bob Bates.

John Ohman, the owner of Liam’s Restaurant on Nauset Beach, said his business was unaffected by the shark sightings. But he did notice a change in people’s attitudes. He thought there were fewer families coming to the beach. And he fielded a lot of questions about the safety of swimming there.

“I had a lot of people coming up to me and saying ‘I don’t want to come here because my kids aren’t going to swim here because of sharks,’ ” Ohman said. He wondered how that attitude might affect Cape tourism in the years to come, particularly if there were another attack. He supported the town’s efforts to get a better handle on detecting sharks and educating people.

“I wonder why we don’t use drones and beach watercraft. The spotter planes at Nauset Beach are great and they should be supported by the towns to keep them out there more often,” he said.

Reynolds said Cape Cod National Seashore would not be changing much for the coming year. Officials decided that they would fly a shark warning flag only when sharks had been spotted, fearing that people would become complacent if the flags were permanently displayed.

As for the haul-out at Coast Guard Beach, Reynolds said winter storms might eliminate the problem by erasing the sandbar.

“Right now, the Seashore is going to continue the educational push and see how the beaches set up (in the spring,)” Reynolds said.

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