Nate Rouette and his brother Nelson set out for a night of shark fishing on Cape Cod expecting the usual excitement. Instead, the Massachusetts anglers hauled in a surprise from much warmer waters: a tropical tiger shark, a species known for trying to eat almost anything it can fit in its mouth.
The brothers, both longtime sport fishermen from Massachusetts, caught and released the five-foot juvenile tiger shark from a beach in late July. Tiger sharks are typically associated with warmer southern waters, including the Caribbean Sea, and scientists say its appearance off Falmouth, Massachusetts, points to warming ocean conditions linked to climate change.
Nate and Nelson said the late-night catch came after hours spent targeting brown sharks, a far more common species in the area.
“And I saw those horizontal lines, indicating it was a tiger shark, which was super cool,” said Nate, who works as social media manager for On The Water magazine. “Immediately I started yelling to my brother, ‘It’s a tiger, it’s a tiger shark!’ And he was in disbelief.”
The shark the Rouette brothers encountered was still young, but tiger sharks can become enormous, reaching more than 15 feet in length and topping 1,400 pounds. The species has a broad diet that includes fish, crustaceans and birds, and it has earned a reputation for swallowing unusual human-made objects such as old license plates and shoes, sometimes later discovered in their stomachs. Adult tiger sharks are considered more dangerous to people than many other shark species, although fatal unprovoked bites remain rare.
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Juvenile tiger sharks have been appearing more frequently in northern waters in recent years, according to John Chisholm, an adjunct scientist at the New England Aquarium’s Anderson Cabot Center for Ocean Life in Boston. He said rising global sea temperatures seem to be making the Atlantic waters off New England more suitable for the species.
Chisholm said the Cape Cod catch is especially notable because young tiger sharks have historically been less common than adults in northern waters.
“Maybe they are coming up here because conditions are right. There’s food, there’s warm waters,” he said. “Maybe it’s becoming a nursery — that’s one of the issues that we will investigate.”
Tiger sharks are among many kinds of sea life that have been trending north in recent years as seas have warmed, and other sharks have done the same, scientists have said. Sightings of great whites off Cape Cod have been increasingly frequent, and the big sharks have also been seen off of New Hampshire and Maine. Scientists have attributed the shift in great white sightings to factors including a higher abundance of seals, which the great whites prey on.
Other sea animals, including black sea bass, appear to be moving north because of the warming of the ocean.
For the Rouette brothers, the encounter with a tiger shark provided a thrill they won’t forget. Nate said the discovery was a reminder of that warming.
“People are definitely seeing more species that indicate that,” Nate said.
