Bryan Burns started the Shark Club in 2016 and has been educating children about marine life ever since. He said it all started with receiving funding for a receiver buoy supplied by the Atlantic White Shark Conservancy on Cape Cod.
In collaboration with AWSC, Marblehead Community Charter Public School offers a year-long shark enrichment program for its students, hosted by Burns.
In the program, students
learn about shark biology;
research-technology systems; data analytics; navigation and mapping; and the potential impacts the presence of apex predators can bring to the local environment, according to the club’s website.
The club is assisted by a
shark-tracking buoy that helps it monitor shark activity right in its backyard. The buoy, MH1, lives a quarter-mile off the coast of Children’s Island.
Great white shark Marianne, as filmed by Skomal during tagging operations.
The buoy tracks great white sharks that swim within 200 yards of the receiver. There might also be other sharks that swim by that the buoy is not able to detect.
AWSC offers a tracking app called Sharktivity. The data is collected from many sources, including its buoy array, spotter plane, and
app-user reportings of in-person sightings of great white sharks in the area, the MH1 receiver’s website states.
Friends of Marblehead Public Schools helped fund the $3,000 buoy and Rich Jordan, the founder of Jordan’s Marine, helped place it.
“Jordans is extremely supportive in what we do, including helping us put the receiver in position every spring,” Burns said.
The buoy has reported 21 detections of great white sharks off the coast of Marblehead. At the time of its installation, in 2016, it was the first receiver buoy in the North Shore to be a part of the AWSC’s network.
Burns said he uses the buoy to help educate children about the
great-white-shark population.
One of the largest sharks the buoy has tracked is Marianne. She passed the buoy in 2017, and at that time was 14 feet long and weighed 2,800 pounds. Two other sharks, Gillie and Cool Beans, visited Marblehead in 2018.
Burns said Marianne has gotten larger since then.
“She’s probably 16 feet by now. That’s a really big fish,” Burns said.
Club members Sammy, Benny, and Marianne Walsh stand in front of a replica of the great white shark Marianne, which is named after Walsh.
Baby oysters rest on a fingertip.
Sammy Burns attends the open house at Northeastern University’s marine science center in Nahant.
Members of the Marblehead Shark Club learn about how baby oysters grow to the adult stage, and how to keep the oyster upweller tank in good
working order.
He said the students in the Shark Club built a life-size replica of her when she was 14 feet long.
Burns has had many speakers come to the Shark Club to talk about their professional experience, including AWSC Education Director Marianne Walsh, who is also the namesake of Marianne the Shark. She said that when the Shark Club was first formed, its members reached out to the AWSC and said they were looking for some educational programming for the students.
Walsh started the AWSC as a volunteer and then was able to join full-time. She said she grew up in Massachusetts.
“So the ocean has always been a passion of mine, and now being able to spread messages about ocean conservation and connect families and youth to the wildlife off our coast is a super exciting opportunity,” Walsh said.
She visited the charter school and held educational programming for the students so that they could learn more about the buoy and understand its importance.
Walsh said one of the goals of her programming is to “really generate awareness” about great white sharks.
“We also want to change the perception of sharks. We want people to understand their role in our ecosystem, and how they play a critically important role in the ocean environment,” Walsh said.
She said several of the club’s programs included learning about the shark-tagging process and the shark’s autonomy.
“Then the kids understood how the tag worked with the receiver that we deployed off the coast of Marblehead, so the equipment that was going in the water the students were following, (they) could understand how it worked,” Walsh said.
At the Shark Club, the learning is not restricted to just sharks. Burns said the club also grows oysters and has done so for the past six years.
He said when the club receives the baby oysters, they are the size of pepper flakes.
After the oysters reach their full size, the club releases them with the Massachusetts Oyster Project, a nonprofit that helps with oyster-reef restoration.
Burns said each year, the club raises and donates approximately 60,000 oysters.
The Shark Club will continue this fall. Burns holds one meeting each week for 45 minutes. For more information, visit Marbleheadshark.com.
