What to know about shark sightings off Rockaways and where they might go

Amid a recent spate of shark sightings off New York City — along with a shark bite at Jones Beach over the July 4 weekend — authorities are monitoring the state’s nearshore waters more intensely than ever.

On July 2, one of the hottest days of the year, city officials warned that "multiple shark sightings" were forcing intermittent closures at Rockaway Beach in Queens. By Friday, the city had closed its beaches 23 times because of shark sightings, all at Rockaway Beach, versus 11 closures for this date last summer, according to the city’s Department of Parks and Recreation.

Also on Friday, George Gorman, state parks regional director for Long Island, said that the suspected July 3 shark attack on a man near Jones Beach’s Field 6 had been caused by a sand tiger shark. The man, who was bitten on the foot, sustained injuries that were not life-threatening. State parks officials have logged two additional possible shark sightings. Last year, there were 10 sightings at state parks and one encounter with a sand tiger shark in which a 20-year-old woman standing in murky water suffered minor cuts. 

Drone pilots from three city agencies are now monitoring beaches there. On Long Island state beaches, 67 pilots now operate a fleet of 46 surveillance drones, and Hempstead Town Board members on Tuesday approved a $10,000 purchase of "water based drone and watercraft prevention equipment."

"They’ll be checked during the day two, three or four times; depending on what they see in the waters it may be more than that," Gorman said of the state beaches. 

But experts, leery of what some call "shark hysteria," said it was difficult to draw many inferences from the cluster of sightings off the Rockaways, the barrier beach about 10 miles west of Jones Beach.

There are likely hundreds of sharks of roughly a dozen species  swimming in New York waters. The state Department of Environmental Conservation said sharks can prevent other species from monopolizing limited resources and degrading the marine environment, and their presence is a positive sign of a healthy marine ecosystem.

Experts said it was unlikely that the population has changed much from previous years, though increased monitoring and public attention — New York City’s shark tweet alone garnered 800,000 views on X — might make it seem that way.

Jackie Conn, of Lynbrook, didn't seem overly concerned during her recent visit to Robert Moses State Park, saying, "I understand this is their water and we're changing their world. They're coming to visit more often."

What is known about the clustered sightings is that, after an exceptionally cold winter and spring, an area of water off the Rockaways "has warmed up really rapidly in a short period of time in a way that’s not consistent along the South Shore," said Oliver Shipley, assistant professor at Stony Brook University’s School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences. 

The warm water could attract certain species of sharks or could attract prey that the sharks follow, Shipley said, though it’s also possible that the area is a way point for sharks migrating north after overwintering in the Carolinas or Florida. It’s possible that, if there is a cluster of sharks off the Rockaways, some individuals might disperse east across Long Island waters, he said.

Carl LoBue, New York Ocean Programs director for The Nature Conservancy, ruled out one hypothesis: Large adult bunker schools linked to shark sightings — it was thought sharks pursued them into nearshore waters — are no more, he wrote in an email. "There are serious concerns that managers have for the last few years been allowing far too many to be taken coast-wide and at too small a size."

Jon Dodd, executive director of the Rhode Island-based Atlantic Shark Institute, said that his researchers were still seeing bait "compression," or clusters of bunker, mackerel and other prey, along the shore, which could bring sharks in tow.  If that’s the case off the Rockaways, "they’re not going to leave anytime soon," he said. Institute researchers have observed blacktip sharks feeding on  a school of prey fish for days, he said. "If the bait moves or the temperature changes, they typically follow the food source."

Dodd noted that the number of shark sightings is almost certainly not the same as the number of sharks in the vicinity. "Most of them, you don’t see," he said. "If they’re 15 feet under, the drone’s not going to pick them up."

Shipley, at Stony Brook, said that the sharks  move "into optimal environmental conditions." But predicting where is hugely complicated, he said, because the ocean is a "really dynamic environment. It changes annually, it changes every day, and it’s slowly changing over time as it starts to get warmer."

NewsdayTV's Shari Einhorn contributed to this story.

By Nicholas Spangler

nicholas.spangler@newsday.comspanglernewsday

Nicholas Spangler is a general assignment reporter and has worked at Newsday since 2010.