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Mrs. V's family has been coming out here for over 100 years. If there were tunnels we would know.
Geshundheit!
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.
When I lived in town I’d use my Bose noise-cancelling earbuds inside the house just to get my work done. My home office was on the back side of a four-story brick townhouse, with another four-story townhouse behind. The noise from the lawnmowers, and leafblowers in that box canyon was intolerable, but the noise-cancelling earbuds tamped it down quite a bit.
When you find the foot control, let me know. I have been taking piano lessons online. I use Musora's pianote and a foot pedal would be fabulous!
Flash flood watch just upgraded to a flash flood warning until 6 PM.