Newport This Week

Under the Bay: Sharks in Narragansett Bay


The worry about shark attacks near Rhode Island emerges every summer, fueled by media accounts, especially when swimmers are injured. Such reports feed the fear that shark habitats are expanding and attacks will become more frequent. Whatever the future of human-shark interactions, past reports of large sharks in Narragansett Bay show that humans have always shared local waters with these apex marine predators.

In 1823, a shark caught in a net in Bristol Harbor measured 10-foot, 3 inches and six feet in circumference. Its mouth was described as big enough to eat a grown man, and in its belly were found “a sheep, a calf’s head and a horse foot.”

More sharks were seen in Bristol Harbor in 1884, but no sizes are noted. In 1831, a shark attacked a boy fishing in Newport by jumping into his small boat. Others in a nearby boat killed the beast and measured it as eight feet long, and between 300 and 400 pounds. Another shark, this time five feet long, was caught in a fish trap near Goat Island in 1874.

Divers sometimes attracted shark attention while on local ship salvage operations, and a seven-foot shark attacked a Navy diver during a training mission in Coddington Cove in 1900. This dramatic story rated a long newspaper essay about how the diver speared the shark and then fought with it until the support team on the surface pulled the diver to safety and killed the shark.

Modern notices of local shark sightings suggest that today’s animals are usually not as large as in the past, but a seven-foot pregnant blue shark washed up on the beach near Westerly in 1972, and another was seen swimming in the nearby sound.

The Rhode Island Marine Archaeology Project has not encountered many sharks, but prudence made the archaeological dive team clear Brenton Cove in Newport when a fin was seen slicing the surface. It turned out to be a benign visiting sunfish, but its presence was a reminder that other dangers may always lurk below.

D. K. (Kathy) Abbass,

Ph.D., Rhode Island Marine

Archaeology Project

One response to “Under the Bay: Sharks in Narragansett Bay”

  1. Rob Cummings says:

    Thanks, that was reassuring.

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