Hundreds of Labor Day revelers witnessed a blood bath when a shark attacked a seal close to the shore at a Cape Cod beach on Monday.
The attack happened around 12:30pm, at Nauset Beach, where a similar attack happened just over two weeks ago.
Monday’s attack happened about 100 feet offshore, a few yards south of the protected swimming area.
A sunbather was the first to notice the attack. That person ran down to the water and started yelling at nearby surfers and paddleboarders to get out of the water.
Surfers sprint for shore after a shark attacked a seal swimming near them off Nauset Beach in Cape Cod on Monday
The shark’s dorsal fin as seen from the beach after the attack, which turned the waters red
Lifeguards from the protected beach noticed the commotion and sprinted down to help clear the area and then ordered everyone else out of the water.
One beachgoer told the Providence Journal that the shark was about 12- to 13-feet long.
‘People were just freaking out they were freaking out,’ Brandon Latham told Fox 25. ‘I just saw like blood.’
‘Everyone just ran to the area and just like they do standing on shore trying to see something – people get very excited – it’s a shark and it’s pretty cool,’ Latham said.
Everyone was able to get out of the water safely, and swimmers were kept out of the water for about an hour after the attack
But the sight of the attack was enough to make many of the beachgoers happy for land when lifeguards allowed them to swim again.
‘I’d never seen anything like that, that’s Shark Week stuff. I’m all set, I’m not going in the water,’ Holly Kee told the Providence Journal.
Great white sharks migrate to the Cape every summer because of the large seal population. Above, seals on Nauset Beach on Monday
Michael Bronson of Toronto, Canada came down to Cape Cod to do some surfing, but after he heard that the shark in the water was a great white, he decided to skimboard on the beach instead.
‘I’m not surfing,’ he said. ‘I don’t surf with great whites.’
The attack came a little more than two weeks after another seal was attacked by a shark at the beach.
The incident on August 20 happened in the protected swimming area, just 20 feet from shore.
Three days later, a beach in Welfleet was closed when a shark bit a paddleboarder’s board.
Sightings of great whites off Cape Cod have been on the rise in recent years, but it’s actually a good sign.
Their presence on the Cape correlates with the rebounding of the gray seal population, which was nearly decimated due to human hunting.
While the sightings have led to closed beach days this summer, no sharks have injured humans this summer on the Cape.