Going back in with a jest and a wary eye

Beaches crowded after shark sighting

Great white sharks are known to cruise the cold waters off Martha's Vineyard, but shark attacks are exceedingly rare. (NEW ENGLAND AQUARIUM/FILE)

WOODS HOLE - Fears about a monstrous shark spotted last week off the coast of Martha's Vineyard had mostly subsided by yesterday, as glorious weather took over the island and Cape Cod and as vacationers flocked to beaches.

Warning signs became souvenirs for some, and the reports that a great white shark had been sighted fueled some good-natured joking about entering the food chain.

"I'm more afraid of getting caught in a school of feeding bluefish," said Arthur Smadbeck, Edgartown selectman whose two sons headed off to South Beach yesterday morning, two days after reports spread that a 15- to 20-foot shark had been spotted there.

"I was kidding them at breakfast, ask ing if they were going to go in the water," Smadbeck said in a phone interview. "They just looked at me funny."

Lifeguards training at the beach Thursday reported seeing a dorsal fin 150 to 200 yards off shore. Local officials posted signs along that 3-mile stretch of sand on the southeast end of the island, warning beachgoers that a shark had been sighted in the area.

By yesterday, most of the signs were gone, Smadbeck said.

"I think that gas prices are going to affect our summer a lot more than sharks," he said.

But while sharks were unlikely to deter people from their vacations, at least a few tourists said they will think twice before venturing into the deep blue sea.

"The swimsuit's going to stay packed," said Zak Merten, 28, who lives in Denver and was waiting in Woods Hole to board the ferry for his first visit to the island.

Walt Morris, who was on the Vineyard with his wife last week celebrating their 25th wedding anniversary, said he did not think twice about swimming in waters off South Beach, until he saw what he thought was a shark.

The 48-year old tourist from Indianapolis said he was on the beach watching seals when he saw a slow-moving dorsal fin off shore.

"I wouldn't get in there," he said as he got off the ferry in Woods Hole yesterday. "I'm too slow."

Great whites are known to troll the cold waters off Martha's Vineyard, but shark attacks are exceedingly rare, said George Burgess, a researcher at the University of Florida who maintains the International Shark Attack File.

"The bad news is that when sharks and humans get together in New England, it's almost always a white shark," he said.

According to statistics on the International Shark Attack File website, a person is more likely to be killed while riding a bicycle or struck by lightning than they are to be fatally bitten by a shark. More beachgoers have drowned or suffocated in collapsed sand holes than have been killed by sharks, according to data on the site.

Still, news of the shark sighting was the topic of conversation on beaches and in shops across the Cape yesterday.

"It's something to talk about," said Bob Coane, who has owned a souvenir shop in West Dennis for 26 years. "There's always fishermen out there spotting good-sized sharks, but it's a bit rarer to see one so close to shore."

At Nobska Beach near Woods Hole, a woman in a white bathing cap swam along the shore, groups of bathers clustered in the water, and families toweled off on the sand.

William Speck, who has a house nearby, said fear of sharks did not keep him from enjoying the water, but he acknowledged that he probably had not swum out as far as he usually would.

"You see a shadow, and you wonder," the New York resident said. "Floating on your back, you wonder if you look like a seal."

Massachusetts has had four recorded shark attacks since 1670, two of which were fatal, according to the shark file. The last fatality occurred in 1936, when 16-year-old Joseph Troy was bitten by a great white shark while swimming in Buzzards Bay.

"The chances [of being bitten by a shark] are absolutely minuscule," Burgess said.

Edgartown police said yesterday that no new sightings had been reported. Lisa Capone, a spokeswoman for the Executive Office of Environmental Affairs, said that there were no plans for state officials to continue looking for sharks.

The department sent a plane to scan the waters off Edgartown Thursday, but the pilot did not see any sharks. "It's been status quo since Thursday," Capone said.

J.J. Toland, a tourist from Morrisville, Vt., said that the only evidence of shark activity he saw on the island was a dry erase board on the beach with a large dorsal fin drawn on it.

"A lot of people who go on vacation here are aware that they're swimming in somebody else's house," Toland said. "Sharks are in the ocean every day; it just happened to be that this day someone saw one."

Tania deLuzuriaga can be reached at deluzuriaga@globe.com.