Jaws and The City

Jason Voorhees headed to Manhattan in Friday the 13th Part 8, Scream 6 is heading to New York, and sharks aren’t afraid to patrol the shores near coastal cities. Who doesn’t enjoy a city break?

It almost sounds like the plot of some new Jaws-wannabe shark film, but researchers from Miami have found that sharks frequented close to shore, when they had anticipated the fish to be urban avoiders like other large predators, such as bears and wolves.

Blue shark in shallow waters on Mallorca beach

Not that you’ll find sharks rifling through your bins, but they are attracted by the noise and the bright lights of the city.

It is thought that great hammerhead sharks, bull sharks and nurse sharks – which were all tracked as part of the study - have all been attracted by the likes of pollutants and even fish being disposed of from the local city aquarium, or perhaps they are just keeping up with the progress of the Miami Dolphins?

You can now track sharks off the East Coast in real time using various apps

This close proximity to shore presents two major concerns, the first is that prolonged exposure to toxic pollutants could harm the sharks and the second is that more sharks near more people in coastal urban landscapes could mean more negative shark encounters.

Discover more about the study by scientists at the University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science, here: Urban sharks: residency patterns of marine top predators in relation to a coastal metropolis (int-res.com)

Words by Dean Newman

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