Shark attacks: the East Coast isn't ready for what's coming.

About 10 years ago, I saw a shark leap out of the water from somewhere near Beach 108th Street in Rockaway Beach, Queens. I had come out with friends to swim on a hot weekend day and just happened to be gazing out at the right moment. The shark breached, was airborne for a single second, and then landed with an inaudible splash about a mile from shore. When I told my compatriots, none of them believed me. “Perhaps,” one suggested, “you saw a dolphin?” Why was it so hard to believe that there might be a shark in the Atlantic Ocean? Don’t they live there? Sure, my friends said—everybody knows that there are sharks in the ocean. But I definitely hadn’t seen one jump out of the water in New York City. That conversation would go differently now. This summer, the reality that New Yorkers share the ocean with an increasing number of sharks has broken through some kind of cognitive barrier. Several surfers and swimmers have been bitten nearby, ushering in a wave of local and semi-national shark stories. New York Gov. Kathy Hochul announced that state agencies would be stepping up shark patrols by helicopter, boat, and…
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