Its four propellers spinning with a force strong enough to cleave a human finger, the orange-and-black drone soared higher and faster, above children splashing in the turquoise water, and then higher still, over the crying seagulls.
“Eighteen miles an hour,” murmured the lifeguard, Cary Epstein, as he tracked the buzzing machine’s speed from the display on his controller one recent afternoon. “Twenty miles an hour. Twenty-one.”
Epstein is in his 26th year as a lifeguard at Jones Beach — a 6-mile jewel of the State Park system that juts into the Atlantic Ocean south of Long Island’s mainland. But this season marks only his third year flying drones over the beach, patrols the state has implemented in response to a new and growing threat in Long Island waters.
Epstein was on the lookout for sharks.
“Just because we don’t see them doesn’t mean they’re not here,” said Epstein, whose team flies the drone at least three times each day. “If we do go out a little bit farther,” he said, steering the drone out over deeper, darker water, “I can really see the whole beach.
“I’m looking to see if there are any large schools of fish,” explained the 43-year-old lifeguard. “And there are none right now.”
So far, to the relief of the 250-strong fleet of lifeguards who watch over the white sands of Jones Beach, it has been that kind of summer on the barrier island about 30 miles from lower Manhattan.
A year after shark visits closed Jones Beach to swimmers about a dozen times, there has not yet been a shark sighting on the beach.
But it may be only a matter of time. Farther east, sharks have already begun to deliver New York swimmers a rattling replay of last season — the so-called Summer of Sharks that left Long Island licking its wounds after eight shark bites, a tally that accounted for 1-in-7 bites worldwide last year, according to the University of Florida.
This summer, four confirmed shark bites have already bloodied New York waters. On Independence Day, sharks nipped two swimmers on Fire Island — off Fire Island Pines and Cherry Grove — and gashed another swimmer in the Town of Southampton, according to cops. A day earlier, a shark bite was reported at Fire Island’s Kismet Beach.
The president of one Fire Island community, Thomas Ruskin of Seaview, jokingly declared Independence Day was “like ‘Jaws’ relived.”
None of the shark encounters proved life-threatening, but Fire Island beaches closed early on July 4. In the morning, a possible sighting of 50 sharks near the beaches of Robert Moses State Park added to the jitters, though experts later deemed the school to be made up of smaller fish.
It has all come as a significant shift for a region of the U.S. where shark encounters were all but unheard of before the last few years.
The surge stems in large part from teeming schools of baitfish that draw sharks close to shore, according to experts. The little fish have grown in numbers due to preservation efforts that have produced cleaner waters.
Though few great white sharks menace Long Island beaches, sand tiger sharks, blue sharks, spinner sharks, sandbar sharks and hammerheads can seem right at home in New York’s warming waters.
One morning last August, Epstein recorded drone video showing a shark, apparently an Atlantic blacktip, swaggering through a sprawling school of baitfish.
“It’s the food chain: Big fish eat little fish,” Epstein said. “This is a very healthy thing.”
Sharks do not seem to savor human flesh. But they can, in rare instances, mistake people for prey, according to experts. And even encounters with mellow, smaller sharks can leave swimmers with gnarly wounds.
Sharks migrate north during the summer, with water temperature dictating their movements, said Greg Skomal, a prominent shark researcher and tracker in Massachusetts.
The shark encounters have crescendoed early on Long Island this summer, a timeline perhaps linked to sizzling temperatures that have simultaneously pushed New Yorkers to the beach.
As the shark bites piled up on Independence Day, Earth experienced the hottest day in modern record-keeping.
“You’ve got the presence of the predator and the prey close to shore,” Skomal said of the sharks and baitfish. “You’ve got, on Long Island, people flocking to the beaches because, quite frankly, it’s hot as hell.
“So, the potential for these sharks making a mistake, or nipping people, goes up,” he said.
Responding to the July 4 bites, Gov. Hochul’s office said the state would commit an additional $1 million for up to 60 new shark-spying drones, and for drone training in coastal downstate areas.
“If the message can get out to the sharks: We are watching,” Hochul said at a news conference on Friday. “We are watching from land and sea and air.”
Going into the summer, the state secured 10 new drones, including the Autel EVO II Pro that Epstein flies above Jones Beach.
The drone costs about $2,000; it can carry a speaker, conduct thermal imaging of the water and brave 30 mph winds. Its powerful camera catches the ridges of rip currents, and its sensors alert users to nearby helicopters, which also survey the beach for sharks and could be downed by a drone collision.
Another new addition to the state shark patrol, a cherry red Yamaha WaveRunner, rested by the lifeguard post as Epstein conducted his afternoon drone sweep on Wednesday.
Epstein said grateful lifeguards have embraced the new tools. When a shark is spotted, the beach is cleared for at least an hour.
The State Parks Office also keeps in near-constant contact with local police officials during open hours at Jones Beach and at the narrower Robert Moses Beach, which runs east of Jones Beach toward the villages of Fire Island.
As lifeguards went about their work last Wednesday, beachgoers paddling in the nearly 80-degree water and sunbathing on the sand expressed little concern about the sharks.
Some said they had hardly heard about the bites; others said they had followed the news but did not feel scared, citing the lack of Cape Cod-style great white sightings or the relative rarity of shark bites in general.
“I’m literally not concerned at all,” laughed Zaina Budayr, a 34-year-old yoga teacher from Williamsburg, Brooklyn, who said she closely followed a possible appearance of a great white shark in Long Island Sound four years ago. “I feel like if I’m getting in the water, my odds are what they are.”
A soaking Deandre Angrum, 20, expressed a similarly relaxed outlook moments after he emerged from the water. “I’m here to have fun — if I see a shark, I’ll swim the other way,” said Angrum, of Williamsburg, adding that the drones are “pretty cool.”
Lounging on the beach, Christina Haller said she grew up on Long Island but now lives in San Diego, where great white shark sightings are far more common. New York’s shark encounters, she said, struck her as comparatively minor.
“I would have been more concerned if there were some legs lost,” Haller, 43, said, even as she voiced support for the surveillance efforts.
Still, it was a quiet Wednesday at Jones Beach, and New Yorkers unnerved by the July 4 spate of bites might not have made it out to the ocean at all.
Epstein, who said he hopes the aerial efforts support swimmers’ peace of mind, wondered if the long stretch of blazing heat had started to keep people home.
“People are a little beached out,” he said.
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