Six months after the Bay State’s first fatal shark attack in decades, neighbors on Cape Cod say more needs to be done to protect people enjoying Cape waters this summer.
Heather Doyle is one of several people now raising money to install new technology to detect sharks in the water in real time. Shark buoys are already deployed in Massachusetts waters, but he data cannot be accessed in real-time.
“We would love to put in some sort of technological solution that’s 24 hours a day, not just when the lifeguards are here,” she said.
The ‘Clever Buoy’, which uses sonar to detect the sharks in the water, is already used in Australia, and was recently tested at Newport Beach in California.
Once the buoy detects a shark it relays that information to an app, and sounds an alarm through the buoy itself to alert swimmers in the water.
“This year is about seeing if it’s feasible, and then hopefully 2020 is a more wide scale solution,” Doyle says.
The project, named the Arthur Clever Buoy Pilot in honor of last year’s shark attack victim, has raised about $35,000 of its $200,000 goal.
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Arthur Medici was killed late last summer, just weeks after another man was injured in a separate shark attack in Cape waters.
Since those attacks, towns across Cape Cod have focused on safety education, and improving trauma response in the event of another attack.
The number of shark sightings near Cape Cod has spiked in recent years, thanks in part to an exploding population of seals.
