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<\/p>\nAshley\u00a0McLennan and her husband, Shaun, of South Thomaston were fishing off Boothbay\u00a0this week when their sternman, Ryan Feener, saw a dorsal fin poke above the water that he at first assumed was a porpoise.<\/p>\n
It was not a porpoise.<\/p>\n
It was something far more dramatic: A great white shark devouring a seal, within feet of their boat. The shark lingered for several moments near the boat, seemingly unbothered by the human presence. At one point, a chunk of seal floated to the surface. The shark\u2019s loitering allowing the crew to capture stunning video of the Wednesday, June 25, encounter which they shared with the Midcoast Villager.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were pretty surprised,\u201d said McLennan. \u201cIt was terrifying and thrilling.\u201d<\/p>\n
Fortunately, they were already in a bigger boat. All three of the crew were in their main boat, leaving no one in the dinghy that towed the other end of their seine.<\/p>\n
McLennan, it turns out, is something of a sharkophile and even has an app on her phone that tracks tagged sharks. She\u2019s seen occasional shark pings in the waters off Midcoast Maine over the years, including one shark named Penny that she tracked for a while, but she never expected to see one so close.<\/p>\n
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\u201cThat was the first time we have ever seen one. It\u2019s something I always hoped we would get to encounter, but never thought it would actually happen,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Two New England scientists who are authorities on white sharks \u2014 Matt Davis with the Maine Department of Marine Resources and Greg Skomal with the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries \u2014 confirmed to the Villager that the animal in the video is indeed a great white shark.<\/p>\n
Walter Golet, a professor at the University of Maine\u2019s School of Marine Sciences, who has participated in shark research with both, brought the video to their attention after he was contacted by the Villager.<\/p>\n
The fact that the shark swims right up to McLennans\u2019 boat shows how \u201ccurious\u201d white sharks can be, said Davis, who has tagged white sharks and studies highly migratory species for the state. The shark\u2019s sex can\u2019t be determined from the video, but its size indicates it\u2019s probably a juvenile, he said.<\/p>\n
White sharks have not been studied in depth in Maine since they have historically been more common in the waters off Southern New England, especially around Cape Cod. That could be changing, however, as Maine\u2019s booming seal population may be drawing more<\/a>\u00a0sharks further north.<\/p>\n \u201cWe know white sharks which move through and use Cape Cod waters are also using Maine coastal habitat to some extent, with a substantial number of white sharks which were tagged there (thanks to Greg and his collaborators) detected on Maine DMR receivers,\u201d Davis said.<\/p>\n Maine\u2019s first-ever fatal shark attack<\/a>\u00a0on record occurred in 2020, when a 63-year-old woman was attacked while swimming with her daughter off Mackerel Cove on Bailey Island in Harpswell. A tooth recovered from the victim confirmed it belonged to a great white. The unprecedented attack prompted the state to step up its research efforts into white sharks, whose behavior in the Maine had previously been poorly understood.<\/p>\n Davis and his colleagues just publishe<\/a>d early findings from that effort in a peer-reviewed academic journal in March.<\/p>\n \u201cWhile significant progress has been made to characterize life history patterns, movement ecology, and regional estimates of abundance of white sharks,\u201d they wrote in the introduction to their paper, \u201cpatterns of spatial distribution remain relatively unknown in the northern Gulf of Maine.\u201d<\/p>\n The study tried to change that, using acoustic sensors that could detect sharks previously tagged off Cape Cod and Hilton Head, South Carolina. It tracked 107 tagged white sharks, with their numbers peaking between July and September, including multiple detected in \u201cclose proximity to several of Maine\u2019s western beaches\u201d and islands.<\/p>\n Still, the researchers caution, they\u2019re playing catch up, and their data is incomplete. Notably for Midcoast and Down East residents, their sensors were mostly concentrated in the western Gulf of Maine, off Southern Maine, so \u201cfuture research should include expanded receiver coverage in eastern Maine and the use of additional tagging technologies.\u201d<\/p>\n Seals populations, after being devastated in Maine and other parts of New England, have been booming since coming under federal protection in the 1970s. And sharks, which are also now federally protected, follow their prey. Younger sharks prey mainly on fish, squid and smaller sharks, but they transition to larger prey, like seals, as they reach maturity.<\/p>\n Globally, white sharks are deemed \u201cvulnerable to extinction risk,\u201d but in the western North Atlantic, which includes Maine, research suggests \u201ca slow state of recovery,\u201d according to Maine DMR.<\/p>\n Still, experts say swimmers and paddlers in Maine should not be overly concerned.<\/p>\n \u201cUnwanted shark encounters are exceptionally rare for your average ocean recreator,\u201d said Davis, before advising general safety protocols: Stay close to shore, swim and paddle in groups and avoid swimming near seals or schooling fish.<\/p>\n The Florida Museum of Natural History, which administers a major database of shark bites<\/a>, notes that wasps, snakes, bees and lightning strikes, not to mention car crashes and drowning, are responsible for far more fatalities every year than sharks. There was only one fatal shark attack in the U.S. in 2024 and some years see zero.<\/p>\n Notably, perhaps, June 20 was the 50th anniversary of the release of \u201cJaws.\u201d<\/p>\n