Great white sharks head north, following seals and alarming beachgoers

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Great white sharks head north, following seals and alarming beachgoers

2025-08-24 19:53 Last Updated At：20:00

SCARBOROUGH, Maine (AP) — Rick Clough spent some four decades fishing for lobsters and sea urchins off the Maine coast before spotting one of the ocean's most recognized predators — a great white shark.

The approximately 8-foot (2.4-meter) shark, seen off the beach town of Scarborough in July, surprised Clough, but didn’t make him fear the ocean — though he admitted, “I’m not sure I’d want to go urchin diving now.”

Boaters, beachgoers and fishermen like Clough who spend time in the chilly waters of New England and Atlantic Canada are learning to live with great white sharks, the creatures made famous by the 1975 film “Jaws.” Sightings of the apex predators are up in places like Maine, where they were once very rarely spotted.

Scientists link the white shark sightings to increased availability of the seals the sharks feast on, and say beachgoers are generally very safe from shark bites. The sharks can grow close to 20 feet (6 meters) long, though most don't get that big.

David Lancaster, a commercial clam digger in Scarborough, used a drone to get a look at an approximately 12-foot (3.6-meter) shark near the town’s famed beaches earlier this month. He described the animal as “magnificent” and “really amazing” to see. But he also said the shark's presence reminded him that swimmers need to look out for the big fish.

Sightings of great whites off Cape Cod, Massachusetts, have become increasingly frequent in recent years, and the Atlantic White Shark Conservancy has documented hundreds of the animals over more than a decade. But new data shows the sharks are heading even farther north into New Hampshire, Maine and beyond, said Greg Skomal, a senior fisheries biologist with the Massachusetts Department of Marine Fisheries and a veteran white shark researcher.

The number of white sharks detected off Halifax, Nova Scotia, increased about 2.5 times from 2018 to 2022, according to a paper published by Skomal and others in May in the journal Marine Ecology Progress Series. Even farther north, the number detected in the Cabot Strait that separates Nova Scotia and Newfoundland increased nearly four times over, the paper said.

Skomal said the average residency in these northern waters has also increased from 48 days to 70 days, suggesting that white sharks appear to be increasingly comfortable farther north.

A key reason for the shift seems to be the successful conservation of seals off New England and Canada via laws such as the Marine Mammal Protection Act, which has allowed seals to thrive and provide a food source for the predatory sharks, Skomal said.

“It could be a function of a growing prey base,” Skomal said. “And that would be seals.”

Great white sharks also benefit from protections, including a ban on fishing for them in U.S. federal waters that has stood since 1997. They are still considered vulnerable by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature.

In Massachusetts, the marine fisheries department said it strengthened its fishing laws after fishermen in 2024 chose to target white sharks anyway. The state prohibited the use of certain kinds of heavy fishing gear in shoreline areas where white sharks are most commonly found.

“We believe here in Massachusetts that targeting white sharks from the beach is not a safe practice,” Skomal said. “Not only because it could result in the death of the shark, but because it could be a public safety issue.”

Despite the size and strength of the sharks, dangerous encounters between white sharks and humans are vanishingly rare. Worldwide, there have been fewer than 60 fatal great white shark bites on humans in recorded history, according to the International Shark Attack File at the Florida Museum of Natural History.

The first recorded fatal shark attack in Maine happened in 2020 when a great white shark killed 63-year-old Julie Dimperio Holowach off Bailey Island.

“It’s an exceedingly rare event. But we’re providing all of this information to mitigate human behavior and hopefully reduce any negative encounters between humans and sharks,” said Ashleigh Novak, research coordinator with the Atlantic White Shark Conservancy.

The growth of social media has made shark sightings go viral in recent summers. A smartphone app called Sharktivity also allows shark spotters to report their sightings.

Lancaster, a surfer, said living with great whites is just something people in New England are going to have to adjust to.

“It's crazy that they are around, as fishermen and surfers, and something we have to accept,” Lancaster said. “It's in the back of your head, but you have to accept it.”

Associated Press photojournalist Robert F. Bukaty contributed to this story in Scarborough, Maine.

This story was supported by funding from the Walton Family Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

Another construction crane collapse in Thailand kills 2 people a day after deadly train derailment

NAKHON RATCHASIMA, Thailand (AP) — A construction crane collapsed onto an elevated road near Bangkok, killing two people on Thursday, a day after another crane fell on a moving passenger train in northeastern Thailand and killed 32 people.

The work on an extension of the Rama 2 Road expressway — a major artery leading from Bangkok — has become notorious for construction accidents, some of them fatal.

The crane collapsed at part of the road project in Samut Sakhon province, trapping two vehicles in the wreckage, according to the government’s Public Relations Department.

Transport Minister Phiphat Ratchakitprakarn said on Thai TV Channel 7 that two people had died. It was unclear if anyone else had been trapped in the wreckage.

There was uncertainty about the number of victims because the site is still considered too dangerous for search teams to enter, said Suchart Tongteng, a rescue worker with the Ruamkatanyu Foundation.

“At this moment, we still can’t say whether another collapse could happen,” he said, citing dangling steel plates. “That’s why there are no rescue personnel inside the scene, only teams conducting on-site safety assessments.”

At the site of Wednesday's train derailment, the search for survivors ended, Nakhon Ratchasima Gov. Anuphong Suksomnit said. Three passengers listed as missing were presumed to have gotten off the train earlier, but that was still being investigated.

Officials believed 171 people had been aboard the train’s three carriages, which were being removed from the scene Thursday.

The crane that fell, crushing part of the train, was a launching gantry crane, a mobile piece of equipment often used in building elevated roadways.

Police were still collecting evidence and interviewing witnesses and have not pressed charges, provincial Police Chief Narongsak Promta told reporters.

South Korea's Foreign Ministry reported a South Korean man in his late 30s, was among the dead.

The high-speed rail project where the accident occurred is associated with the plan to connect China with Southeast Asia under Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative.

In August 2024, a railway tunnel on the planned route, also in Nakhon Ratchasima, collapsed, killing three workers.

Anan Phonimdaeng, acting governor of the State Railway of Thailand, said the project’s contractor is Italian-Thai Development, with a Chinese company responsible for design and construction supervision.

A statement posted on the website of the company, also known as Italthai, expressed condolences to the victims and said the company would pay compensation to the families of the dead and hospitalization expenses for the injured.

Transport Minister Phiphat said Italthai was also the lead contractor on the highway project where Thursday's accident took place, though several other companies are also involved.

The rail accident had already sparked outrage because Italthai was also the co-lead contractor for the State Audit Building in Bangkok that collapsed during construction last March during a major earthquake centered in Myanmar. The building's collapse was the worst quake damage in Thailand and about 100 people were killed.

Twenty-three individuals and companies have been indicted, including Italthai's president and the local director for the company China Railway No. 10, the project’s joint venture partner. The charges in the case include professional negligence and document forgery, and Thailand's Department of Special Investigation has recommended more indictments.

The involvement of Chinese companies in both projects has also drawn attention, as has Italthai and Chinese companies’ involvement in the construction of several expressway extensions in and around Bangkok where several accidents, some fatal, have occurred.

In Beijing, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said Wednesday the government was aware of the rail accident and had expressed condolences.

Associated Press writers Wasamon Audjarint in Bangkok and Hyung-jin Kim in Seoul, South Korea, contributed to this report.