“Shark tore off half the body with one bite, swam down, then came right back and grabbed the head just as I was reaching for it. You could hear its teeth slap together.”

Tony Biski shook his head, bloodshot eyes squinting from beneath a weathered baseball cap against the late-summer wind and sun. His boat planed over unseasonably calm seas, always scanning for signs of fish.

“Damn thing musta been 15 feet long.”

His shark tale was spurred by passing one of the many yellow buoys around Monomoy Island, just off Chatham, MA, which scan the surrounding Atlantic seeking radio transmissions from tags embedded in the more than 100 great white sharks known to cruise the area. Sharks have been a hot-button issue for the region as more and more great whites arrive every year to feast on a huge, protected and rapidly multiplying seal population. The toothy interlopers continually cause beach closures and experts predict it’s only a matter of time before a fatal attack on a human occurs. It’s a hard thing to ignore as we skirt sandy shores lined with mountains of honking seal sausages, many bearing the telltale marks of a close getaway…

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