This was the first time this guy ever kayaked!
MSNBC reports:
A first-time kayaker had a close encounter with a great white shark off the coast of Massachusetts over the weekend.
Sunbathers first spotted the shark following two kayakers on Saturday afternoon off Nauset Beach, the Cape Cod Times reported, and yelled to the men offshore.
One of the kayakers saw the shark and quickly paddled in, while it took the other one, Walter Szulc Jr., of Manchester, N.H., a little while longer to notice the dorsal fin just feet away from him.
“There were hundreds of people on the beach, and they were all at the edge, yelling paddle paddle, paddle!” Dave Alexander told the NBC News affiliate in Boston, WHDH.com.
Szulc said when he looked behind him, the shark “was pretty much right there.”
“It was good-sized, it had a fin sticking out, so I just turned and paddled,” he told WHDH.com. It was the first time Szulc had kayaked.
Since June 30, three sharks have been seen plying the waters off Cape Cod for food, the Cape Cod Times reported. The large number of seals in the area is believed to be drawing the sharks.
Orleans Harbormaster Dawson Farber said he and his team went out in a boat to confirm the sighting – he noted the shark was an estimated 12 to 14 feet long — and they had all bathers get out of the water. The beach was also closed.
“Everyone was very relaxed and the shark put on quite a show moving back and forth out in front of the beach, but it was done in a very orderly fashion,” Farber told ABC News.
Witness Debbie Sutton said Szulc “started booking it.”
“You could see the darkness of it,” she told WHDH.com. “It was longer than the kayak … it was crazy big.”
Not all beachgoers were scared by the great white. Some even got into the water at the beach later in the day.
“Everyone wanted to see it,” Karen O’Connell of Medfield told the Cape Cod Times. “There were people running toward it.”
The last shark attack on a human in the area was in 1936, when a man was killed swimming near Mattapoisett, the newspaper reported.
Great white sharks come to New England for a very simple reason:
The New England gray seal population is continuing to grow. And we all know that great whites are major predators of marine mammals.
Gray seals have made a comeback in the northwestern Atlantic. Both Massachusetts and Maine had bounties on gray seals, and they were heavily persecuted in Atlantic Canada for transmitting the cod worm.
The United States has very strict regulations for protecting seal and sea lions. The Marine Mammal Protection Act of 1972 has allowed seals and sea lions to thrive in our waters.
Of course, as they have been able to thrive, so may their predators.
Great whites are currently protected in US waters.
So people are going to be swimming in water that contains a predator and prey dynamic of two protected species.
It’s actually somewhat amazing that these sharks haven’t attacked anyone since 1936.
The potential is there.
It just hasn’t happened yet.
I am glad I only canoe and kayak in lakes and rivers of the US and Canada.
Of course we have a lot of seals and great whites here in CA as well. By some
curious coincidence one attacked a kayaker off the coast of Santa Cruz on Saturday, taking a big bite out of the bottom of the kayak. Fortunately another boater rescued him.
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Indeed it is amazing there are not more attacks of the Great White. Florida does have several varieties. The Mangrove tree that once grew on many beaches were cleared for humans. The roots are problematic to laying oneself out on the beach.or entering the water. These trees provided protection to the baby sharks. Yes even a shark will protect its young when they determine they are threaten. Likely, not something the media wants known, but that is why it is wise not to swim without a lifeguard tower during reproduction season of sharks.
Sharks bites are far to common IMO. Likewise the mangrove also were superior protection to shorelines during hurricanes against erosion. There are many ancient plants like the Palmetto whose root system protected the shoreline and homes removed for the comfort and relaxation of the beach folks.
I thought the ocean temperatures were a deterrent to great white sharks in New England… I guess the surface temperatures have risen quite a bit though.
As someone who kayaks regularly (not regularly enough though I might add) in north Queensland waters amongst large estuarine crocodiles and tiger sharks there is a creature I fear at the beginning and end of all my trips. Every day it claims victims…called the drunk driver…a related species “the distracted texter” is also a threat. Have never been tailed like this but I’m sure it would raise my paddle rate a notch or two :)
Isn’t that the truth?
I think the reason why these sharks rarely attack people is that gray seals are much larger than people. Sea lion pups on the West Coast aren’t.
Yeah, from what I’ve read, Great Whites, being endothermic, require a pretty large calorie load. The best source for those levels of calories is from the blubber of marine mammals. While the typical American carries a good bit of body fat, it can’t compare to seal blubber for concentrated calories. I have read that both Great Whites and Orcas have taken to eating otters when the seal-lion population has crashed, but the calorie payoff is really too low to keep them going for long.