Bostonia: This year, there have been several attacks on Long Island, and they’re deploying a lot of drones and other sorts of technological methods of keeping people safe. Reporters ask, why aren’t we doing more of that kind of stuff up here?

The towns are forever evaluating options. They try to work in concert, but each one takes a different approach to some extent. Wellfleet is, in my opinion, the single town that wants to embrace some of the newer technologies. They really like our real-time reporting receivers, for example, which will tell those lifeguards when there is a tagged white shark in their swimming area. I also know that they deployed at least one drone this summer.

Other towns, Orleans, for example, basically operate like there are always sharks in the swimming area. And those are the guarded swimming areas. Their premise going into beach safety is, there could always be a shark swimming in this area, so we have to act accordingly. Other towns are pretty much hands-off. And keep in mind, many of these beaches are managed by the National Park Service, and they’re completely hands-off—swim at your own risk.

I think the fear that some towns have—and I don’t know whether they’ve consulted with their legal counsel—is their liability associated with giving a false sense of security. There’s also concern that if you start doing some sort of new technique, you’re going to have to stick with it even if it’s proven not to be very effective. And so one of the things that I’m doing with the conservancy is trying to evaluate, for example, the efficacy of drone use. Will it work, and under what conditions will it not work? Other technologies are pretty much off the table. We haven’t seen much movement at all on, for example, underwater sonar systems. I think that’s for the most part cost-prohibitive and untested.

Bostonia: How has climate change affected this whole situation?

We believe that right now climate change isn’t doing much with regard to shark movements, nor seals, even though perhaps it could be a factor. It’ll be interesting to see how climate change influences the sharks in the coming years, and we’ll be able to do that because we have so many tagged.

But, in essence, the general understanding among the seal biologists is that historically, seals have always been present on Cape Cod, but we drove them to the brink of extinction over a hundred years ago. And so most people today do not remember there being many seals, and they’ll say it’s a new phenomenon. But what we’ve done is given half a century of [marine mammal] protection to these animals, and they have responded and come back and repopulated areas where they previously existed. And as a result, white sharks are drawn to them as a food source.

Climate change may influence the timing of sharks in terms of their arrival, their residency, and their departure. Historically, we know they have gone all the way up to Newfoundland in the past, and they continue to do that. So we don’t see a range extension north. But we may see some shifts in timing of migration.

Bostonia: In the book, you talk about being a kid in 1968 watching Jacques Cousteau on TV. If you told that little boy where you’d be today, what would he think?

He probably would not believe it. He was pretty fascinated back then. Cousteau did bring new imagery into our living rooms. How far we’ve come over these last 50 years is absolutely amazing to me. But I still pinch myself. People say to me, “You seem so excited when you’re doing your job,” and they wonder whether I’m acting. And I say, “No, no, I’m still that little kid sitting on a couch going, ‘What’s that cool-looking shark doing right now?’”

I’m fascinated by it, and I always tell my wife that one of these days I’m gonna overreact and have a heart attack on the pulpit because I’m not young anymore.

Bostonia: It’s funny you use the phrase “heart attack on the pulpit” because that was going to be my next question. You mention dreams a couple of times in the book, and you also talk about that most famous Greg Skomal video moment, which would have given a lot of people a heart attack. And I’m wondering, does that feature in your dreams now?

[Laughs] It’s funny, it happened so fast at the time, really a split second, that I was in shock to some extent. But watching the video over and over and over again is what kind of started me thinking—and certainly got my wife thinking. The kids were fascinated by it. But I keep assuring people, I was really pretty safe. What I think about is not the shark maybe coming straight up at the pulpit, because I’m protected there. I really am. But what about a breaching shark that comes over to the side of the pulpit and lands on me? These are 1,000-, 2,000-, 3,000-pound animals; they have incredible power and momentum.

So, sometimes when I’m out on the end of the pulpit and I’m not seeing a shark that’s supposed to be there, you’ll see me casually walk off the pulpit. If I don’t know where this shark is, how do I know what it’s going to do? They are unpredictable. But the dreams I have—actually I had one last night, another white shark dream, with me in the water and the presence of the shark and the overwhelming feeling that I’m not safe. And I wake up sometimes in cold sweats.