A handful of white sharks were spotted along Cape Cod over the last week, along with slightly more shark predations off the Cape’s beaches.
Since last Friday, June 27, four white sharks were spotted around the Cape, with five potential sightings based on bitten seals or seal carcasses that were photographed, according to the Atlantic White Shark Conservancy in Chatham.
The conservancy has tagged and named white sharks typically seen swimming around the Cape’s coasts. These acoustic tags transmit data from shark detections in real time, with the results appearing on the conservancy’s interactive shark-tracking app called Sharktivity.
In the week following June 20, four sharks were spotted, along with one bitten seal, Sharktivity showed.
Many of the recent physical shark sightings since last week were on June 29 and 30. The only sighting on June 29 was at around 7 a.m. off Monomoy Point in Chatham. The log on Sharktivity stated that a white shark “took [a] fisherman’s striped bass.”
The next shark sighting was caught on video swimming off Provincetown’s western coast at around 9:30 a.m. on June 30. Brendan Clarke, a senior deckhand working for Captain John Boats, took video of a white shark swimming close to the water’s surface.
The next sighting was at around 9:58 a.m. that same day, a few miles from Ellis Landing Beach.
The fourth sighting of the week was south of the Cape in Nantucket Sound, at around 10:44 a.m. on June 30. Sharktivity showed two photos of an 8-foot-long white shark just below the water’s surface.
Of the seals spotted with shark bites and carcasses seen over the last week, the first was two flippers attached to a carcass spotted near Mill Creek in South Chatham at around 3:17 p.m. on June 28.
Another seal carcass was seen between Sea Street Beach and Raycroft Beach in Dennis Port at around 12:12 p.m. on June 29.
Two seal carcasses were found on Nauset Beach in Orleans, one at around 2:21 p.m. on June 30, the other at around 1:39 p.m. on July 1.
The other seal seen in the past week was spotted with a bite wound south of Orleans Beach at around 3:43 p.m. on June 30.
Besides all of these sightings, another white shark was spotted off Nantucket’s southern shore at around 2:47 p.m. on June 30.
“Saw a shark fin as I was running down the south shore of Nantucket so I throttled back and this juvenile white shark swam right by us,” a message with the accompanying photo read on Sharktivity.
One unconfirmed sighting was also logged at around 12:59 p.m. on July 2, seen 25 yards from Sconset Beach in Siasconset.
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