Rip currents kept East Hampton Town and Village lifeguards busy over the Fourth of July holiday weekend, but this week the story was less red flags and more “elevated marine life.”
Some 20 sharks, mostly spinner sharks but also threshers, were spotted off Main Beach on Saturday. Noting the media coverage of sharks off UpIsland beaches recently, Drew Smith, the head lifeguard in East Hampton Village, said he closed swimming at village beaches because of their presence that day. The only village beach that remained open was Georgica Beach.
“We’re monitoring our beaches daily with drones and with personal watercraft, if necessary,” said John Ryan Jr., the head lifeguard for East Hampton Town, adding that the sharks spotted from town beaches had been 400 to 600 yards out, feeding on bunker. “We don’t have swimmers out that far,” so he kept beaches open.
“It’s their ocean,” Mr. Ryan said of the sharks.
Mr. Smith said he starts thinking of closing the beaches to swimming if a shark gets within 100 yards of the shore, but even then, he assesses the number of swimmers, and conditions. It’s not a hard rule.
He and Lee Bertrand, the village’s assistant beach manager, both received Federal Aviation Administration licenses to operate a drone and are employing one owned by the village this summer to help safeguard swimmers. “The drone has been extremely helpful because we can tell if [the sharks] disperse,” Mr. Smith said. When they are spotted, he said, village guards will drive a personal watercraft parallel to the shore in a grid pattern to push the bait balls
— the main attraction for whales, sharks, and bluefish — farther from the shore. Town guards use the same methods.
Calm waters like what we’ve had this week after many days of rough seas are often the time when marine life is most evident, since much of the bait gets pushed closer to shore.
Portuguese man-o-war sightings continued over the weekend; however, their numbers appear to be dwindling from the prior week. A maximum of five were removed from village beaches by lifeguards in a single day last week.
Mr. Ryan said that Sutton Lynch, a guard who is proficient with a drone, even spotted a tuna feeding on a bait ball off Atlantic Avenue Beach.
In a press release on beach safety issued on Friday, the town reminded people to “avoid swimming near bait balls, or groups of fish and other sea life that is prey to larger animals.” And if you notice a potential threat, the town said, notify lifeguard staff or the town Police Department at 631-537-7575.
A distressed dolphin that was nearly beached during the red flag days was unable to be retrieved by the New York Marine Rescue Center in Riverhead. It drifted out beyond the breakers. “Somebody had a good dinner,” Mr. Ryan said.
In terms of surf, last weekend was a calmer one at the ocean beaches, but during the busy weekend before July 4, Mr. Smith said village guards had to enter the water 97 times to assist or rescue swimmers. “Some assists were full-blown saves,” he said. To put that number in perspective, he said, guards entered the water 161 times in total for 2021, which was considered a busy year.
He said beaches were well staffed and that guards stayed on an extra hour at Main Beach due to crowds and ocean conditions.
“We had multiple saves after the extended time, so it was worth staying open,” he said.
At town beaches, too, there have been a “good number of rescues with respect to rip currents and whatnot” through the season but only a few outside of protected areas, according to Mr. Ryan. “People have become a little more conscientious about swimming near a lifeguard. We can’t control what Mother Nature wants to do with us once we enter the ocean. She’s the biggest factor.”