The placid waters of Race Point Beach weren’t so placid this week as beachgoers near Provincetown, Mass. were treated to a vivid biology lesson. A sizable great white shark finished off a seal just feet from the shoreline.
Dom Richmond captured the above video at Race Point. You can see the seal laying on the beach looking wounded, then it cuts to the shark coming back to take its prey after the seal returns to the water. The seal was apparently “swimming awkwardly” before dragging itself to shore and the safety of shallow waters.
“It was kind of rolling in with the waves and trying to just lay up on the beach,” Richmond told the Boston Globe. “It got to the beach and was sitting there for awhile. “(Once it returned to the water), the shark would come at it, but at first it was too close to shore so (the shark) swam away again. Ten minutes later the shark came back, and that’s when you see it take the seal under and it never came back up.”
In the video, kids can be heard commenting on the scene as the shark, which doesn’t look small, makes the final kill. Lifeguards cleared the waters once the shark was spotted. Richmond estimated it was only 20 to 30 feet from where water met dry sand when it made the kill.
It’s been a sharky week for the area that is known for its great white population. Another great white was spotted in Chatham as well as Orleans, near Nauset Beach. Race Point Beach is on the northern tip of Cape Cod, while Nauset is on the southern end. In 2017 surfers were chased from the water at Nauset and treated to a gruesome scene as a great white mauled a seal, again feet from shore filling the waters with blood. The last fatal shark attack on Cape Cod was in 2018 when boogie boarder Arthur Medici was killed at Newcomb Hollow Beach 18 miles southeast of Race Point.
