(Bloomberg Businessweek) -- On a glorious July afternoon, the big fish swims toward us, its signature dorsal fin slicing the water. The great white shark measures 12 feet, maybe more. Its jaws snap shut on 300 pounds of seal. “We have predation,” says the guide on my shark-viewing excursion. The attack leaves behind a gory red plume, the money moment in a bloody good business.
Shark tourism generates more than $300 million a year in places such as Australia, the Bahamas, and New Zealand. But I’m on Cape Cod, the Massachusetts seaside destination where growing numbers of great whites have taken to summering over the past decade. They come for the cuisine: tens of thousands of gray seals lazing in the coastal surf. It’s a conservation success story, the result of decades of federal and state laws protecting both predator and prey.
Some Cape business owners worry that sharks will drive away tourists—especially after the killing of a boogie boarder last September—but many others are scrambling to cash in. They sell “Seals Taste Like Chicken” and “Nice to Eat You” T-shirts, hoodies, coasters, decals, and baseball caps. And then there are the shark-sighting tours. The one I took, which cost $2,500, is booked solid this summer.
The Cape Cod Chamber of Commerce recently held nine focus groups to gauge the fallout from the sightings and attacks. Chief Executive Officer Wendy Northcross says the chamber reached two broad conclusions: “People are very aware of the sharks, but it’s not going to keep them away.”
Others, notably surf shops, aren’t so sure. Last year, board-sports enthusiasts were the victims in more than half of shark attacks worldwide, according to the University of Florida’s International Shark Attack File. And some Cape Cod residents are debating the merits of killing sharks and seals vs. erecting nets and other barriers. Experts emphasize that you’re less likely to die from a shark attack than from a lightning strike. Although it followed a mauling the month before, last September’s fatality was the first in Massachusetts since 1936.
On the Cape, shark commerce is centered in Chatham, a town of 6,000 about two hours southeast of Boston. (It’s a one-hour ferry ride and 40-minute drive from Martha’s Vineyard, the island where Steven Spielberg filmed the 1975 classic Jaws.) A store called Chatham Whites sells shark-themed clothing it calls “killer casual apparel” under a sign that reads “Warning: Shark Fascination.” Founder Justin Labdon hawks some $50,000 worth a year. That’s about 5% of his main business, upscale beach chairs. “We were the first people to jump on the whole shark situation,” he says.
He now has plenty of company. The shop Yankee Ingenuity welcomes visitors with a wooden bench in the shape of a life-size great white. There, Lexi Williamson, 11, visiting with her grandmother, stares into a jewelry case. “The shark ones are cute,” she says, pointing to earrings with blue gemstones. They’ll complement the purple shark flag hanging in her room, her father says.
In the era of shark attacks, businesses have to tread delicately. Earlier this year, the Christmas Tree Shops unit of Bed Bath & Beyond Inc. withdrew shark-related merchandise from Cape Cod after some found a kitchen towel it was selling beyond the pale. “Send More Tourists,” it read. “The Last Ones Were Delicious.”
North of town, the Atlantic White Shark Conservancy’s Chatham Shark Center, which takes a more educational approach, has become a premier destination. There, in a former outdoor-furniture store, tourists marvel at a replica of the Jaws great white, gaze at hammerheads through virtual-reality glasses, and learn facts about the creatures, which predate the dinosaurs by hundreds of millions of years. More than 16,000 people visited the center last year, up 60% since 2016, says conservancy CEO Cynthia Wigren. Founded in 2012, the group has worked with state scientists to tag more than 160 sharks so their behavior can be studied.
Along with its own shirts and hats, the conservancy sells $40 shark license plates, $500 sponsorships for a shark-detecting buoy—even $2,500 naming rights to the sharks it tags for research. Its Sharktivity app, which lets people track sightings of the fish, has more than 200,000 downloads. For $5,000 a year, a business can become a sponsor.
The conservancy also runs the shark cruise I took, a 2 ½-hour tour that leaves twice a day, in partnership with the Chatham Bars Inn, a luxury resort. The $2,500 fee covers a maximum of five people and includes a $760 donation to the nonprofit, which supplies a guide and captain.
At the wheel on my trip is Josh Higgins, an 18-year-veteran captain in an epaulet shirt who once skippered yachts. In pursuit of sharks, he steers our 28-foot twin-outboard craft in tight circles. Surprisingly, given the great white’s razor-sharp teeth, the vessel has inflatable sides, which helps it sidle up to other boats.
Higgins has heard all the Jaws jokes. “You’re gonna need a bigger boat,” he deadpans, quoting the famous line when Police Chief Brody (Roy Scheider) first sees the great white’s gaping maw. While Higgins scans the sea, expert shark spotter Wayne Davis pilots a single-engine plane that buzzes above us like a sea gull.
Within 10 minutes we’ve found our first shark, a dark outline swimming deep below the surface. Other sightings quickly follow. A shark is “one boat” away or “two boats,” Davis radios from his plane. When our quarry returns to the open ocean, “he’s headed into the abyss,” he says.
In all, we see a dozen sharks. We even become a tourist attraction ourselves. Two young men in backward baseball caps and beer T-shirts follow us in their motorboat, then video the sharks with a remote-controlled drone.
An hour into our trip, a great white swims right up to us. It’s so close I can see deep gashes on its back. The wounds likely came from the claws of gray seals fighting for their lives. The shark rises up, nearly hitting the boat as it switches direction, its tail drenching us with water before it returns to the deep. The scene is both thrilling and unsettling, the very definition of shark tourism.
To contact the author of this story: John Hechinger in Boston at jhechinger@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: James Ellis at jellis27@bloomberg.net, David Papadopoulos
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