- [Michelle] A great white shark rebound in local waters.

- So the best estimate is over that four year period that 800 individual white sharks visited the waters off of Cape Cod, which makes it among the larger white shark aggregation sites worldwide.

- [Michelle] And the quiet epidemic among America's military veterans.

- At Sunrise, 6:23 in the morning, the doorbell rings and it is two Marines in they're dress blues.

Coming to tell us that our son is gone.

- [Announcer] That was an incredible shot.

So there's no way she could score from there, but she did.

- [Michelle] And small in stature, but playing big.

- I often feel underestimated, but that's part of what I like.

(upbeat music) (upbeat music continues) - Welcome to "Rhode Island PBS Weekly".

I'm Michelle San Miguel.

- And I'm Pamela Watts.

Late summer and autumn are officially shark season in the Northwest Atlantic Ocean.

Environmental efforts to safeguard these animals have led to a huge increase off our waters.

- The now booming population of great white sharks is a conservation success story with potentially scary implications for beach goers.

The Atlantic White Shark Conservancy recently let photojournalist Michael Jones and contributor David Wright go on board as they search for the ocean's apex predator uncomfortably close to shore.

- [Narrator] Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water.

- It's not that little.

- [Narrator] Comes a pointed reminder that you might wanna think twice, at least in Cape Cod.

- I guess the headline is there are lots of sharks here, more than we thought.

- Yes.

- [Narrator] Megan Winton of the Atlantic White Shark Conservancy is one of the authors of a new study documenting a surge in the population of great white sharks here in recent years.

- And what's your best estimate?

- So the best estimate is over that four year period that 800 individual white sharks visited the waters off of Cape Cod, which makes it among the larger white shark aggregation sites worldwide.

- She and her colleagues have spent years patrolling these waters tracking every shark they encounter.

- Nauset ORV, yeah.

- Has he got a tag?

- They recently let us tag along.

- We did just get one.

Okay, so it says, white sharks spotted a hundred yards off Southern most part of Nauset ORV.

So that's them.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So one of the eco tour boats just spotted a white shark a little bit to the north of us.

- Aha.

- So we're sending the pilot up to investigate and we'll see.

- [Narrator] Overhead they have a spotter plane.

The pilot Wayne keeps a sharp eye out.

- [Wayne] I think I just passed one.

I'm making a 180 here.

- [Narrator] On the boat they have underwater cameras and microphones and a ready supply of these things.

- It's just kind of like an easy pass for sharks.

This thing, I mean, that's the simplest way to explain it.

- Do you charge toll?

- We should start.

- [Narrator] A radio beacon with batteries that last 10 years.

Every time a tagged shark swims past one of these yellow buoys, it sends out a ping.

The conservancy relies on citizen sightings too from a growing number of eco tour boats.

- You get to see some?

- Yeah.

We saw one super shallow here.

About 14 feet, it wasn't tagged.

- [Narrator] The people on that boat tell us they saw a 14 footer here moments ago.

Every sighting from people or pings gets relayed to an app you can download.

Sharktivity, they've identified more than 600 individual sharks here over the past 10 years.

Many of the sharks are return customers, just like the beach goers.

- So I bet your app is fairly popular among beach goers.

- I mean, I'd like to think so.

It's been downloaded over a hundred thousand times at this point, and it's a great platform for us to report sightings when we're out on the water for eco tour boats to report sightings and for anybody who's out.

So it's a great citizen science tool.

It'll be more fun when there's a shark.

- Meagan and her team deploy a hydrophone, an underwater microphone, listening for a ping from a tracker.

- Oh look at wow.

- [Narrator] False alarm, all we find here is this school of stripers.

The shark apparently long gone.

It may come as a surprise to know that nearly 50 years ago when Steven Spielberg scared the pants off just about everybody with his iconic movie about sharks and this part of the Atlantic, the population of great whites here was in danger of dying out.

- We gotta get a bigger boat.

- [Narrator] Did Steven Spielberg help or hinder your work?

- Well, for me, Spielberg, you know, kind of motivated me to be a scientist, you know?

- Oh really?

- Yeah, yeah.

- [Narrator] You're here because of "Jaws"?

- I am, in essence.

- Greg Skomal was still in grade school when "Jaws" came out.

The movie caught his imagination in the best possible way.

- I was motivated by the scientist in the film, as were a lot of colleagues of mine at the time to become shark biologists, you know?

So as a young kid watching that, I was thinking, "Wow, this is a really cool job."

- [Narrator] Skomal has personally tagged more than 300 sharks.

Fulfilling his dream at a time when Cape Cod is finally beginning to see the dividends of decades of marine conservation efforts.

Over the last 50 years the Marine Mammal Protection Act gradually helped the seal population to rebound.

25 years ago, sharks were listed as a protected species too.

Now both species are catching up.

- If you think about it, in the time that both sharks and seals were gone, Cape Cod has exploded as an area that draws people to enjoy this environment.

And so now the predators coming back to feed on its prey, but it's overlapping with human activities.

And certainly humans are not used to that.

And so, but they're coming to grips with it.

- [Narrator] The team deploys a drone for a bird's eye view of the water.

What they tend to find is that the sharks spend about half their time in water that's less than 15 feet deep.

- We've got the seals which love the beautiful beaches of Cape Cod.

So do people.

And the sharks are coming in close to shore to hunt for seals.

So there is an overlap of these three species.

- Somebody who loves the ocean, loves the environment.

Many people do, they wanna see healthy shark populations, but they also might wanna boogie board and go surfing and get their swimming in.

And they're gonna have to change their behavior because of the presence of these animals.

- [Narrator] This morning, a shiver of more than 50 sharks spotted off the New York Coast.

On New York's Long Island, that's become an urgent issue over the past two summers there's been a series of shark attacks.

- [Greg] It has a tag.

- [Narrator] Finally, late in the day, a bonafide sighting.

- Pretty.

- [Narrator] Greg Skomal climbs out onto the pulpit like a friendly Captain Ahab armed not with a harpoon, but a GoPro camera, a 14 footer a teenager not yet fully grown.

Great white sharks are four feet long when they're born.

They can grow up to 20 feet long, their lifespan more than 70 years.

- So that shark right there is one that we tagged a few weeks ago, you know, right in this exact same area.

So clearly it's been sticking around.

And I think the only reason they stick around is if they're successfully feeding, because no point in staying in an area where you're not having any success.

I love he's just staying in the shallows.

- [Narrator] Most of the regulars have nicknames.

Not this one yet.

- Who gets to name it.

- We've got a donor in the queue who gets to name that shark.

And that program helps us fund the cost of research trips.

- So you contribute a little to the work that you guys are doing.

- Yes.

Yes.

- And you get to name a shark?

- Exactly, it's a pretty cool thing.

- How much does the Shark's name go for these days?

- $2,500, which covers the cost of a research trip.

- [Narrator] That nickname, will pay for another day out on the water like this one, adopt a Shark.

- It's basically an Adopt a Shark program.

(calm music) - September marks National Suicide Prevention Month.

In recognition, we are revisiting a story.

Contributor Dorothy Dickey first reported last February.

While trauma has always been a part of the human condition the psychological effects of exposure to traumatic experiences did not have a name until 1980.

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, or PTSD, recognized that people exposed to violence often suffered from long-term psychological and physical effects.

And research shows that those who have gone through trauma are more likely to attempt or commit suicide.

This has been especially true for our veterans of war who survived the first battle, but all to often lose the next one after they return home.

And a word of warning, the issues discussed in this story may be disturbing to some viewers.

- Suicide is a disease of isolation.

You're feeling alone whether you are physically alone or you just you feel that way.

I think there's active duty suicides every day.

And for those that don't die by suicide in the military, they get out and they become a Veteran Suicide.

You are definitely much more likely to die by suicide as a veteran than you are as a as someone that has not served in the United States military.

(calm music) It's extremely prevalent amongst a very small population.

You consider less than 1% of Americans serve in the United States military and they have a higher suicide rate than those that don't.

- Certainly, one is way too many.

We'd love to get to zero.

And the VA's, that top priority is veteran suicide.

So we're really putting a full court press on trying to get veteran suicides down to zero.

But I'm sorry to say that some veterans have committed suicide or successful suicides in Rhode Island.

I think in fiscal year '22 we lost seven of our veterans to suicide.

(calm music) - The VA didn't do the best job of taking care of Vietnam veterans when they returned from Vietnam.

So we're really trying to get our arms around those veterans who may not be enrolled to get that healthcare.

We think if we can get them into the VA we can continue to drop that number down.

(calm music) (calm music continues) Unfortunately you don't know if an overdose was an intentional suicide attempt or is an accidental overdose.

It's clear that some of those are suicides, right?

The question of course could be how many?

We advocate for veterans to get better access to care.

Sometimes we, in the veteran community and in the prevention community, we get a little caught up in the number.

If we can get that 17 down, then 15, that's great.

That's two less every year.

But it's still too many.

- When you're experiencing all these crazy things.

Let's talk about it.

It's not your fault.

- Yeah.

(calm music) I did two tours to Iraq.

One in 2015, and then again in 2016 in support of Operation Inherent Resolve.

We were supporting the Iraqi army.

So we got shot at with indirect fire on a very regular basis.

We spent most of our time treating Iraqi casualties.

So we saw a lot of wounded Iraqi army.

You can't escape some of the things you've seen.

I saw a lot of Iraqis that were very, very damaged.

And it's hard to put those things away.

They never go away.

(calm music) - And they grew up learning all about the war on terror.

And so David was thrilled to go there, to lead a unit there.

I know he wasn't prepared for what he was going to experience when he got there.

There were times he would call in the middle of the night and "Mom, I'm scared.

"There's bombs going off everywhere."

When David came back to the States before he was sent to 29 Palms in California to prepare for his tour to Syria, he spent some time at home and it was good.

He would tell about some of the experiences that he had been involved in.

Did we know that he probably carried some PTSD when he returned?

Yeah, we did.

You didn't pick up on anything other than that was just part of the job.

You know, that's what they all did.

And so he left to California, he was super excited.

- [Dalton] He was a great guy, right?

He was a Marines Marine.

He was dedicated to, to his craft as a machine gunner.

And he's just a good dude all around.

- And after he'd gotten settled on base, our daughter that lives out there is calling us in the middle of the night.

"Mom, Mom, we can't get ahold of David.

"Something's wrong."

One of the officers called us and said, "Mrs. Kavanaugh, I'm so sorry.

"We have found David."

(calm music) And at sunrise, 6:23 in the morning, the doorbell rings and it is two Marines in their dress blues.

Coming to tell us that our son is gone.

- [Dalton] I close my eyes and I can still see Sergeant Kavanaugh on the ground with the gun in hand in a in a pool of his own blood.

So it's, those images never go away.

And it's, as you get further and further away from it, it's harder and harder to move past it.

Right?

- His twin brother, Tommy, he had gotten out of the Marine Corps, went through firefighting school, had become a paramedic, and we never saw him sober again.

You could just tell he had this anger that was unbelievable.

He had a sense of abandonment by his brother.

'Cause they were identical twins.

And so one day he just wrote a letter to our whole family and just said, "I came into this world connected to my brother "and I can't wake up every day and look in the mirror "and see his face and know that he's not here.

"And so I'm gonna go be with my brother."

And went back to his apartment, committed suicide.

And it was unbelievable.

Just unbelievable.

- Because of my line of work I know of between 25 and 30 have died by suicide.

You know, there's a a huge culture of alcohol use in the military.

And we, we drink, right?

We drink when we're happy, we drink when we're sad, we drink to celebrate, we drink to mourn.

You'll find yourself trying to drink it away.

So when you're under the influence to the point where you you no longer see suicide as a bad idea, it makes it something that you you could bring yourself to do.

I think that's the piece we can really approach to start slowing down veteran suicides.

(calm music) I think a lot of veterans have had a suicidal ideation.

I'd be lying if I told you I haven't had the thoughts, right?

I had a gun in my hand once.

I was luckily I was I kind of came to and put it down.

I wish I could say there's a way to end veteran suicide but there isn't.

There's no way to guarantee that veteran suicide is gonna end.

And anybody that suggests otherwise is are they lying or they're not being realistic.

But we can absolutely reduce the frequency.

And the way we do that is we get engaged, getting them engaged in other things.

Whether that's emotional support animals, right?

Dog training.

I think dogs are a really good way to get veterans engaged in things.

- When you have such intense grief, you have to find a purpose for your pain.

Canines for Warriors, their mission is to prevent warrior suicide through assigning a service dog.

We've trained them in our house and given them a dog to where now they can go be in the world.

It's been an incredible healing process for us as well.

Have these dogs in our home where they give us comfort and support and then we get to turn that leash over to another warrior and say because our son didn't have this opportunity, we wanna give this opportunity so that no other parent gets that phone call that we got.

- [Dalton] It's about re-engaging in the community.

Getting re-engaged is kind of that first step into getting the mental health help.

If you're, even if you're resistant to it.

- Hey, at Comic-Con we're gonna see a lot of veterans that we otherwise wouldn't normally see.

Veterans that have never heard of the Vet Center before.

There aren't aware of our services.

- Hey.

- Hey.

First of all, welcome home.

- [Veteran] Thank you, oh, I appreciate that.

- Do you know about the vet center?

- The what?

- We don't.

- The Vet Center.

We're part of the VA but we're separate from the medical center.

We do readjustment counseling services, all right.

That's our bread and butter.

When we lose the military service, a lot of us we don't know what's next.

There's not necessarily a plan.

So that's why we really try to focus on giving them opportunities to experience new things.

We have licensed clinicians you can come in and talk to.

It's all confidential.

We do a lot of veteran engagement pieces and we do the archery every Monday night with Americans and bow hunters.

Just yesterday I had three Vietnam veterans in Mystic, Connecticut with me on a fishing charter free of charge.

'Cause the goal is for you to go do it again.

- [Veteran] Right, right.

- Yeah, we want you to want this to be a new hobby.

Hobbies are so important to our community.

'Cause the last thing we want is the veterans to go home and do nothing.

We have Dungeons and Dragons for Veterans.

You know, that's when we get stuck in our own heads.

You know, that's when we start thinking too much.

I actually embed a clinician into that group.

'Cause we find that a lot of veterans they'll say a veteran has violent tendencies.

- [Veteran] Right.

- They tend to have violent tendencies in the game.

And then after the session our clinician goes over that stuff with them and says, "Hey, why did you attack that poor guy?

"He wasn't doing anything."

We need to be engaged.

And veterans do so much better when we engage with each other.

- [Veteran] We're a family of sorts.

- We are family.

- Yeah.

- So if you need something, anything, you call me, call me one Marine to another Marine.

It's that easy, brother.

All right, Semper Fi brother.

- Hoorah.

- Hoorah.

You know, we're gonna have a clinician on site just in case any veterans approach us and are in crisis and need to talk to somebody.

We have full confidentiality access in the Mobile Vet Center.

How many people know that they can come here and get the level of care that they're gonna get?

And we hope that they all know about it and that they can come out here.

Just in general, we hope that they know about us so that they reach out to us if they need us.

I'll stop by and see you guys.

- Yeah, I think we're seeing a shift, right?

People are being more and more comfortable with the ideas of therapy, with approaching mental health and substance use, getting access to that care.

They're still a stigma.

They're told for the course of at least four sometimes up to 30 years, that mental health that it cares for the weak when they get out, they're gonna continue thinking that.

- The first thing you feel in suicide as a parent is guilt.

What were the signs that I didn't see?

There's no place for us within the system to talk about what we experience.

We've gotta have the military accept that these men and women talk about these traumatic experiences.

(gun blasting) - I think it's changing.

If they serve in an environment where getting access to that care is easy and it's accessible and it's acceptable within the unit to get that care when they get out, they they will continue to engage.

(calm music) - If you are a veteran in crisis or concerned about one, connect with qualified veterans crisis line responders for confidential help.

This service is private, free and available twenty four seven.

Call 988 and select one.

- Finally, we take you to the Newport Polo grounds to introduce you to a player who's most often the smallest on the field.

Opponents of Minnie Keating have learned the hard way that looks can be deceiving.

Tonight as part of our continuing My Take series, Keating gives us her take on the importance of determination.

- There is nothing like going flat out on the field and riding hard.

You've got 1200 pounds in your hand and you're hitting a ball the size of a lacrosse ball.

- [Announcer] She's trying, Minnie gets incredible shot away.

I do not, that is a goal.

That was an incredible shot.

So there's no way she could score from there, but she did.

- My name is Minnie Keating.

I'm a player here at Newport International Polo, and this is My Take on determination.

- [Announcer] Minnie Keating, can she finish it?

Yes, she can.

Minnie Keating.

- I often feel underestimated, but that's part of what I like.

Guys will come onto the field and they'll see this small small lady in pink and they'll, you know, give me the first play.

Maybe play me easy in the first run.

But then after that they know that I'm coming for them hard.

I have always kind of been a more defensive player and a more aggressive player.

Because I started so young, I wasn't able to really carry the mallet or swing and hit the ball.

It was very heavy for my little twig arms.

So my job has always been to go after the best player on the other team and try to slow them down and stop them.

So part of the aggression comes from how could I be useful at a young age and being a small person against the big guys.

And the horsemanship is what really allowed that.

- [Announcer] Dan Keating, oh a lovely near side under the next shot.

Absolutely inviting his daughter, Minnie to attack the ball.

Minnie is attacking it and Minnie puts it through the goal.

Really good, good teamwork by the home team.

- Polo is particularly challenging in that you're riding a thousand pound animal that has a a mind of its own.

And the horses are actually your teammates.

So your teammates horses are also your teammates.

So it's really important that everybody has full control and understands what horses everybody is riding in that particular period of play.

- [Announcer] We're gonna get the bell.

(bell pinging) There's the bell.

She's pushing it forward.

Can Roger get to it?

He's gonna what?

He's gonna have to cut it.

It's running good, Roger.

Oh, it gets to the goal from Minnie.

I think that's a Minnie goal.

Yes, it is.

- The other difficult thing is that it doesn't necessarily require a lot of physical strength to hit the ball.

It's really all about timing and finesse.

So coupled with the strength it takes to control a thousand pounds going 25 miles per hour, you also have to have a delicacy and good hand-eye coordination.

So it's a balance between being strong and being gentle at the same time.

- [Announcer] As coming back in defense, doesn't quite get the back end.

Minnie gets a second goal.

- Determination is extremely important when you're playing polo, because polo is very time consuming and it requires more than just a ball and a set of cleats.

It's all inclusive and you spend early mornings at the barn, late nights, and that's just to care for the animals.

So you have to be determined to do all that work and then get on the field and play your best.

Part of my determination is to show all the young women and young girls that are watching that they can compete with men, especially in polo and they can be a big presence even if they're a small person.

I'm Minnie Keating.

This has been My Take on determination.

- Hip, hip.

- Hooray.

- Hip, hip.

- Hooray.

- Hip hip.

- Hooray.

- And the Newport Polo season ends on September 30th.

That's our broadcast this evening.

Thank you for joining us.

I'm Pamela Watts.

- And I'm Michelle San Miguel.

We'll be back next week with another edition of "Rhode Island PBS Weekly".

Until then, please follow us on Facebook and X and visit us online to see all of our stories and past episodes at ripbs.org/weekly.

Or listen to our podcast on your favorite streaming platform.

Goodnight.

(upbeat music) (upbeat music continues) (upbeat music continues) (upbeat music continues) (upbeat music continues)