Ready for its closeup: Great white shark caught on underwater camera in Scituate

SCITUATE − Say chum!

A great white shark in Scituate was recently captured in a too-close-for-comfort video coming snout to lens with an underwater camera operated by the Cape-based Atlantic White Shark Conservancy.

Taken about two weeks ago, the video showing the shark's sharp rows of jagged teeth and unique facial markings was posted to the conservancy's social media sites Monday, Aug. 5.

"When the team was viewing white sharks feeding on the whale carcass off of Scituate, MA a few weeks ago, they were able to get some video of this curious white shark," the organization said in a post accompanying the video on X.

In the 29-second clip, viewers can see what appears to be a bit of that meal stuck in the shark's back teeth as it swims by, although it's doubtful anyone or anything would stop the predator to point that out.

More seals, more sharks

The Atlantic White Shark Conservancy works alongside the New England Aquarium, the state Division of Marine Fisheries and other organizations in both tracking the sharks and educating the public about their steadily increasing presence along the South Shore, Cape and Islands, due in part to an explosion in the region's seal population after the hunting and killing of seals was outlawed in Massachusetts in the 1960s. That ban went nationwide in 1972, via the Marine Mammal Protection Act, that seals began to recolonize the region.

The number of great white sharks dropped in the 1980s and 1990s with the expansion of commercial and recreational fishing. Since aquatic mammals were listed in 1997 as a species that people could not hunt, capture or kill in the northwest Atlantic, their numbers are rebounding. The sharks can range in size from 11 to 16 feet on average depending on age and gender.

Sharktivity app, other tools aid cameras in tracking great whites

The Atlantic White Shark Conservancy and New England Aquarium teamed up a few years ago to develop the Sharktivity app, which provides information and push notifications to users on white shark sightings, detections and movements.

All the data collected by the organization is available to the public on an interactive web application accessible via the Atlantic White Shark Conservancy's White Shark Logbook website, which scientists have been building in recent years.

Towns including Scituate, Marshfield, Duxbury and Plymouth have joined in the effort to warn people about the sharks’ presence − even if the risk of interaction is low − and aid in research efforts to gauge the number of tagged sharks present in the hopes of establishing their behavioral patterns and migratory schedules by deploying acoustic detection buoys in the water that capture information on the presence of tagged sharks passing within range.

The data will be retrieved when the buoys are pulled from the water in the winter.

Drones and dorsal fin camera tags are also helping researchers collect more accurate and expanded information.

Balancing better great white detection with actual increases

David Chisholm, an adjunct scientist for the fisheries, science and emerging technologies program at the New England Aquarium’s Anderson Cabot Center for Ocean Life, has been studying sharks for nearly 50 years. He said in a 2023 Patriot Ledger interview that the advancements in detection technology may skew the perception of just how much the great white population in the area has actually increased.

More: Photos: Marshfield harbormaster team launches shark-monitoring buoys in Cape Cod Bay

“We’re tagging more (of the sharks), so we’re recording more,” he said. “But they are here and have been long before the Pilgrims, and their numbers are only increasing.”

David R. Smith covers breaking, trending and restaurant news for The Patriot Ledger. He can be reached at Drsmith@gannett.com.

This article originally appeared on The Patriot Ledger: Atlantic White Shark Conservancy shares Scituate shark video