Sharks are arriving for the 4th of July holiday, but this new tech is keeping bites at bay

These guys are keeping some unwelcome guests from the 4th of July party.A surge of sharks is making it’s annual pilgrimage to New York’s beaches — but drones in the sky are working hard to stop the big fish from feasting on swimmers.The advanced technology has been hovering above the coast and monitoring the prehistoric predators as they increasingly frequent shores from Rockaway Beach to Montauk.“If you look, you shall find.

We’re using that technology in the name of public safety to help prevent something from happening.The likelihood is really, really slim, but it can happen,” Cary Epstien, a lifeguard supervisor who pilots drones at Jones Beach.“Don’t be confused — people need to know that there is a generic risk of going in the ocean.

Usually, people don’t get eaten by sharks, but on occasion, accidents do happen and things do happen.You are entering their house.”Shark bites have plummeted since the bloody summers of 2022 and 2023 — during which there were 13 reported encounters on the south shore, including five in a particularly gory three-week period.That scary number dropped to just one incident last summer — with the victim suffering such minor injuries that it took a full-fledged investigation to determine that the cuts similar to one gained from “stepping on a sharp shell” actually came from a juvenile tiger shark, said Epstein.The shrinking could be thanks to the Empire State seriously beefing up its anti-shark monitoring tools in recent years, with Gov.

Hochul this year upping Long Island’s fleet to 46 drones and 67 drone operators.Epstein and his crew send the tiny aircraft to the skies a minimum of three times per day.Since spotting an actual shark in the murky waters is like “looking for a needle in a haystack,” operators are instead trying to locate large, swirling pods of bunker fish, a favorite shark delicacy, which are a clear indicator the predators may be nearby.Once the swarms of bait fish are spotted,...