Great white sharks may be heading to Massachusetts beaches, along with the tourists, this Memorial Day weekend.
Gregory B. Skomal, the state’s great white shark expert, said Friday that a wounded seal spotted on a Nantucket beach last weekend indicates that one or two of the large predatory animals are likely swimming off Massachusetts.
Memorial Day weekend is considered the unofficial start of summer — and the start of the great white season for coastal communities.
“Memorial Day weekend, the sharks do show up, and there is usually a handful that are here by the end of May,’’ Skomal said in a telephone interview. “But the bulk of the population isn't here, really, until we get into mid to late June.’’
Most of the great whites don’t arrive until the sun has warmed the Atlantic Ocean into the 58 to 68 degree range, Skomal said. On Friday, temperature in Nantucket Sound was 53.8 degrees and north of Provincetown, 54.9 degrees, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
“They do go into colder water, and they do go into hotter water,’’ he said. “But the bulk of their time is spent in water temperatures’’ between the high 50s and high 60s.
Skomal, with the support of the Atlantic White Shark Conservancy, has put electronic tags on about 100 great whites for research purposes in recent years but there are so few of them around now that he won’t be on the water trying to tag til mid-June.
“There aren’t enough animals, white sharks, around for us to study,’’ he said.
Skomal said the state’s tagging system cannot collect real-time data on the whereabouts of the tagged sharks and instead depends on collecting data periodically from buoys, which will be steadily returned to the sea over the coming days.
Skomal expects that the cold water will keep the number of humans swimming during the long weekend on the small side. Should they go in, he said, there is minimal statistical chance they will encounter a great white, he said.
“I’m not too concerned about that,’’ he said.
Steve Annear of the Globe Staff contributed to this report. John R. Ellement can be reached at ellement@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @JREbosglobe.
