Cape Cod, Sharks, and a New Reality
Will a swimmer’s death from a great white shark attack—the first in over 80 years—forever change vacations on the Cape?
Cape Cod, Sharks, anda New Reality
Will a swimmer’s death from a great white shark attack—the first in over 80 years—forever change vacations on the Cape?
Last summer’s deadly shark attack on a swimmer at one of Cape Cod’s most popular beaches forced Cape officials to confront some difficult questions: Will vacationers keep coming back if they’re nervous about lurking great whites? Will some people migrate toward the safety of the kettle ponds and away from the ocean? Are there new technologies that might prevent future attacks and make the beaches safer—or that could help a victim in the event of another attack? And if it were possible to make the seals go away, would that solve the shark problem? How those questions are answered could determine the future of this New England tourist treasure.
In this series
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Part 1 Will Sharks Scare, or Attract, Cape Cod Tourists?
You’re more likely to be crushed by an office vending machine than to die by shark attack. But don’t bother Cape Cod tourism officials with trivia like that, as they’ve spent the past eight months hoping that the first fatal attack on their beaches since 1936 won’t scare swimmers, families, surfers, day-trippers, and summer renters […]
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Part 2 Why You Should Keep a Tourniquet in Your Beach Bag
When it comes to mangled extremities, Peter Burke and Tracey Dechert have seen their share. They’ve operated on people with grave limb injuries from car crashes, motorcycle accidents, dog attacks, and the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings. This is, after all, what trauma surgeons at Boston Medical Center do. But there is one type of injury […]