A tourist on a boat witnessed and recorded the moment a great white shark tore apart a seal in the calm waters near Cape Cod.
Great white shark attacking a seal. (Video: AWSC)
The peak shark season along the coast of Massachusetts typically lasts from August to October each year, but many sharks continue to swim and hunt through November. One such hunt occurred on November 7 near the southern tip of Monomoy Island, a 13-kilometer stretch of sand southwest of Chatham, Massachusetts.
The nonprofit shark conservation organization Atlantic White Shark Conservancy (AWSC) shared a video capturing the entire attack on social media platform Twitter on November 19. A tourist named R. Nossa filmed a 32-second video, featuring the dorsal fin of a shark briefly breaking the surface, accompanied by splashing sounds and a pool of blood spreading across the water.
Great white shark tearing apart a seal.
Since much of the attack occurred far away and underwater, it is difficult to determine exactly what happened, but representatives from AWSC stated that the shark’s prey was a seal. The most common seal species near Cape Cod are the harbor seal (Phoca vitulina vitulina) and the gray seal (Halichoerus grypus atlantica), which reside here year-round. Great white sharks hunt both species of seals, according to the Coastal Research Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts.
The great white shark (Carcharodon carcharias) is one of the most widely distributed shark species found along coastlines and offshore around the world, where water temperatures range from 7 to 27 degrees Celsius, according to the ReefQuest Shark Research Center in Vancouver, Canada. Great whites frequently appear in the Cape Cod area, especially in the late summer and early fall, AWSC reported.
In recent decades, conservation efforts have led to a surge in the populations of both seals and sharks. This has resulted in an increase in shark sightings in the waters of New England, with some sharks swimming as close as 3 meters from shore, according to a report from Boston University in September 2020.
