Nantucket beachgoers got a front-row seat to a great white shark devouring a seal close to shore over the weekend, as swimmers were told to get out of the water.
Blood was spotted in the water off Great Point while the shark feasted on the seal. Multiple shark sightings were reported on Sunday off Great Point, which is located on the northern tip of Nantucket.
“Out of an abundance of caution, we closed down swimming Sunday afternoon,” a spokesperson for The Trustees of Reservations, a conservation and preservation organization, said in a statement.
“While shark attacks are rare, we advise visitors to please obey beach closures following shark sightings,” the Trustees spokesperson added. “If the beach is open for swimming, beachgoers should never swim near seals, never swim alone, limit their splashing, and avoid murky or low-visibility water.”
The beaches were never closed, as swimmers were asked to leave the water for an hour or two.
Last July, sharks were seen thrashing in the water off of Great Point Nantucket Island, while the apex predators ate prey.
As a result of those shark predation events, a temporary swimming ban was put in place at Great Point last July.
Seals are the major prey species for the great white shark. As the seal population has exploded around the region, the great white shark has become more numerous.
The Atlantic White Shark Conservancy’s Sharktivity app, which records shark sightings around the region, includes the Great Point seal predation event from Sunday.
Another recent shark sighting on the Sharktivity app was a dead seal found with a shark bite wound in Truro’s Pamet Harbor along the inner Cape.
Also, the Dolphin Fleet Whale Watch on Monday reported seeing a thresher shark, which was an “incredible and RARE sighting.”
“Thresher sharks are shy and considered harmless to humans, but if you’re a small schooling fish, watch out!” the Dolphin Fleet Whale Watch posted. “Threshers wield their long tail fins like underwater whips to stun fish such as herring, mackerel, and sand lance.”
Meanwhile, as this week is “Shark Week,” local shark expert Greg Skomal in a Museum of Science video recalled “probably the most frightening 30 seconds of my life” when he was diving and had a close call with a shark.
Initially, Skomal and researchers got a report of an 18-foot shark feeding on a whale carcass. Skomal placed a tag on “Curly,” the first mature female white shark that he had ever tagged in the Atlantic.
“I was extremely excited, and I also wanted to go diving with her,” Skomal said.
He spent about an hour in the water with her before Curly got wrapped up in the diving cage.
“She proceeded to break the cage apart, while I was in it,” Skomal said. “She freed herself, we got out of the cage, we were perfectly fine, but it gave me such a tremendous respect for this animal. And I felt bad because we had kind of interrupted her meal.”
Months later, researchers learned a lot from her tag.
