Great White Sharks are prowling the shores of Cape Cod once again as the seal population continues to explode. If there was any doubt that the great predators are here to stay it was dispelled when the discovery channel aired Shark Week and the Great Whites of Cape Cod were prominently featured.
I would still like to see a Great White Shark but I would hate to have to go to South Africa to see “air jaws” when we have our own crop of “Jaws” right here at home. At first they were just hanging out in Chatham eating the seals of Monemoy Island but now it appears that they are spreading northward toward Orleans and Truro.
So on a sunny day last week I headed to Chatham to see for myself. My last visit to the seals on Monemoy was back in 2010.
A lot of changes can happen in 3 years. The first change was that the little shuttle isn’t running. I’m still researching ways to get to the island but in the meantime I called the Beachcomber Seal Tours and made a reservation for an afternoon trip.
The tour didn’t leave from the Fish Pier this time. They said that parking had become impossible there so they had us go to their marine showroom and then shuttled us to the boat in a green trolley.
We had a full boat for the afternoon trip. The boats stay in the harbor so are pretty small, certainly nothing like the whale watching boats. As we loaded a seal popped it’s head up right by the dock.
Even though we could say we’d seen a seal, that wasn’t part of the tour. We actually had a bit of a ride to get to the harbor near the seals. As we approached North Beach we saw the first of the seals.
The tide can swing up to 9 ft. here between high and low tide. The tide was still low so the sand bars were just below the surface and the seals were sitting in the water on these submerged sand bars.
Oh what a racket they were making.
They weren’t concerned about the boat in their midst at all. We moved on past Lighthouse beach to another seal colony.
Eventually we reached the fish pier where we passed Chatham’s pirate ship before turning for home.
The whole tour was maybe 1.5 hours. There weren’t any Great Whites but we sure did see seals.
