Meetings Ahead
Most meetings in Wellfleet are in person, typically with an online-attendance option. Click on the meeting you are interested in on the calendar at wellfleet-ma.gov for details. All meetings are at Town Hall unless otherwise indicated.
Thursday, Dec. 19
- Council on Aging Advisory Board, 9:30 a.m., Adult Community Center
- Board of Assessors, 11 a.m.
- Natural Resources Advisory Board, 2 p.m., online only
- Herring River Executive Council, 3 p.m., online only
- Local Housing Partnership, 4 p.m., online only
- Energy and Climate Action Committee, 7 p.m.
Conversation Starter
Three Unwise Men
The National Park Service has no updates to offer regarding its investigation into three men who appeared to be fishing for great white sharks from LeCount Hollow Beach on Sept. 28, Susan Reece, chief of interpretation, education and cultural resources for the Cape Cod National Seashore said in an email to the Independent.
The three men, who are identified in a Wellfleet police report as Alexander James Whittet, Sean Willis, and Brennus Parks, were reported to the police by surfers for using drones to drop hooks baited with bluefish into the Atlantic surf. The surfers were concerned that the fishing lines would entangle them and that the bait would attract sharks that could kill them. Fishing for great white sharks is illegal in all American waters.
It is also illegal to fly drones on National Seashore property, but the Wellfleet police report notes that the three men were standing on private property, although it does not say whose. The Independent attempted to contact members of the Sexton family, which owns the only private property in the area where the drones were launched, to learn whether the three men had the landowner’s permission, but did not receive a response.
It is legal to fish for some other species of sharks, and when the Independent contacted them in October that is what Parks and Whittet said they had been doing. Megan Winton, senior scientist with the Atlantic White Shark Conservancy, and Gregory Skomal, a program manager at the Mass. Div. of Marine Fisheries, both said that those other shark species do not exist in near-shore waters, and that the only shark that could plausibly be caught from shore on the Outer Cape is a great white.
Nonetheless, it does not appear that any charges or fines have been issued to the three men who went fishing with drones on Oct. 28. —William von Herff