- Cleveland Bigelow, 69, is luck to be in one piece after he was attacked by a shark
- Bigelow’s paddle-board suffered a one-foot bite mark from the attack
- He was in only a few feet of water, there were seals spotted nearby
- This is the second incident with a shark close to the shoreline in Cape Cod
- On Monday a seal was killed by a shark in shallow waters just feet from the shore
A beach on Cape Cod has been closed after a shark bit a paddle-board as a man was standing on it.
Cleveland Bigelow, 69, was paddle-boarding Wednesday and was in 3 to 4ft of water off the shore of Marconi Beach when the shark attacked. Thankfully only Bigelow’s board suffered the shark’s bite.
‘It was like being on a motorcycle and getting hit by a truck,’ Bigelow told the Cape Cod Times.
A man was attacked at Marconi Beach but thankfully only his paddle-board suffered the bite
‘Needless to say it knocked me off my board and I looked down and it was pretty clear what had happened,’ he said.
Bigelow says he didn’t see the aquatic predator coming or going. The bite mark measured about a foot across.
He says he paddled in and ran to the surf school to let them know they needed to get everyone out of the water.
He got up, paddled in and told people running a surf school that they needed to get everyone out of the water, Bigelow said.
‘Seals were observed swimming nearby,’ a Facebook post by the Cape Cod Seashore says. ‘The encounter occurred during high tide and in calm seas.’
Bigelow had leg abrasions and a small hematoma on his right knee from being knocked onto the board but he didn’t need hospitalization, according to Seashore Chief Ranger Leslie Reynolds.
There was panic on a popular Cape Cod beach Monday after a shark attacked a seal just yards offshore in Orleans
He was extremely lucky. Bigelow was between kneeling and standing when the shark attacked.
Kathy Tevyaw, acting superintendent at the Cape Cod National Seashore, says the beach was immediately closed after the call came in between 10am and 10:30am.
Several other beaches on Cape Cod were closed Monday due to shark sightings. At one beach in Orleans, a shark attacked a seal close to shore, sending surfers a few yards away frantically swimming to land.