The viral, graphic footage of a great white shark killing a seal a few feet off the shore of a packed Nauset Beach in Orleans this week has revamped concerns of the ocean predators lurking in Cape Cod waters.

On Tuesday, the County Commissioner of Barnstable, which covers almost all of the Cape, proposed a "localized shark hazard mitigation strategy" that would involve luring and killing sharks that lurk too close to the Cape's popular swimming beaches.

"Tagging the sharks and studying them is all well and good," Barnstable County Commissioner Ronald Beaty said by phone. "But when the day comes a child is eaten or maimed for life ... by the time somebody is killed by a shark here, it's too late."

Beaty said his proposal is modeled after baited drum line techniques used in South Africa and Australia. The baiting method drops lines with bait and hooks on them to lure and capture sharks near populated beaches. "Large sharks found hooked but still alive are shot and their bodies discarded at sea," Beaty's office said in a statement.

In Massachusetts, there has not been a fatal shark attack since 1936. But studies have found the number of individual white sharks in Cape waters has increased since 2014.

A study conducted by the Mass. Division of Marines Fisheries with support from the Atlantic White Shark Conservancy found 68 individual white sharks in 2014, and 141 individual white sharks in 2015. But Senior Marine Fisheries Biologist Dr. Gregory Skomal says these findings should not be taken at face value.

"You have to be careful with sightings, because they can be driven by effort," Skomal said. In other words, the more time and resources researchers put behind identifying sharks, the more findings they may have.

With apps like the Atlantic White Shark Conservancy's "Sharktivity," any user can report a shark siting. That means more sightings may be reported on weekends, when people are more likely to be at the beach, than other days.

"We go out twice a week. We actively look for sharks Mondays and Thursdays but those data get stored and then compiled at end of season," Skomal said, adding that the 2017 summer season is, so far, on par with previous years.

Skomal said he would have to review the strategy suggested by Commissioner Beaty before commenting on it fully, adding that he would need to know the basis of the proposal.

"Is it the killing of the seals?" Skomal asks. "Is it number of people killed by sharks in Massachusetts? Because I can't find any."

Commissioner Beaty himself says the proposal was motivated "to save lives and prevent a tragedy from happening," but admits that the growing seal population is directly related.

"We're victims of our own success so now we've got man eating sharks off of our shores," Beaty said.

He is referring to the Marine Mammal Protection Act passed in 1972, a federal law intended to preserve all marine life that directly helped recolonize the hunted seal population in Massachusetts waters. The number of seals off of Cape Cod has tripled since then, which has attracted their predators as well.

"There are always unintended consequences to actions that we take," Beaty said. "We need to become proactive not reactive because the problem is only going to get worse."

Beaty also said the shark fears hurt the Cape's vacation tourism, though that is not the main reason for his proposal.

"People panic. That hurts the Cape's economy," Beaty said. "If something happened now, there's no protocol. What are we going to do, close beaches for entire summer?"

If it were to pass, the baited drum lines would have to be deployed along at least six Cape Cod beaches, according to Beaty. He "ballparks" the lines would cost around $10,000 per beach.

In Western Australia, there were 15 fatal shark attacks from 2000 until 2014. That year, in 2014, more than 300 sharks were tagged and the controversial "catch and kill" strategy was put into place. The project, which implemented 72 baited drum lines along beaches, cost the country around $20 million according to news reports.

"There was a lot of pushback from Australians, it was very controversial to remove sharks that way," Skomal says. "This is a controversial proposal."

The shark culling method drew intense protests by Australians and conservationists who argued sharks play an essential role in keeping the ocean ecosystems healthy. The baited policy was ended in in March 2017 under the leadership of a new state official.

But in Massachusetts, fears are high. Just a day after announcing his proposal, another Cape Cod beach was closed due to a shark biting a paddleboard in Wellfleet.

"We have to take a look, whether they go with this proposal or something else," Beaty said, adding he hopes he can start a dialogue on the shark problem off the Cape.

Beaty, who was sworn into his position at the beginning of this year, served time in federal prison on a 16-month sentence in the early 1990s for threatening the lives of President George H.W. Bush and Sen. Edward Kennedy. He later described the time as "going through a bad period" which he had since recovered from.