Several great white sharks were spotted in the waters near Old Orchard this week.
Scarborough police issued two shark updates Wednesday. The first said a drone operator observed five to seven great white sharks swimming and feeding in nearshore waters. Later that evening, the department said it received additional footage showing several sharks between the Pine Point Jetty and the sandbar that runs parallel to the Scarborough River channel and extends toward Green Buoy No. 3.
Photographer Karl Ramsdell also captured drone video at Pine Point on Wednesday evening.
“They were everywhere,” Ramsdell said. “I was flying from shark to shark.”
The increased activity is believed to be associated with seasonal prey availability, including schools of baitfish and seals.
The videos fueled discussion on social media after a Facebook post claimed researchers were chumming the water down the coast near Old Orchard Beach and fishing for great white sharks off the beach at night.
“We are NOT chumming the waters, and are following all the rules set forth by DMR,” Diego Bernal, who leads the Bernal Fish Ecophysiology Lab at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, wrote in an email to the Bangor Daily News.
The lab is conducting research under a special permit issued by the Maine Department of Marine Resources and follows strict guidelines on when and where it can fish. The team works only at night, notifies the Maine Marine Patrol before each outing and has conducted research on just four nights since July 1, Bernal said.
“The recent shark sightings occurred before we even began our work this week,” Bernal wrote. “These fish are in the region and we are just trying to understand their movement patterns and residency in the area.”
Old Orchard Beach stretches about seven miles and is Maine’s busiest beach. Great white sharks migrate to the Gulf of Maine each summer as part of their natural range, though encounters with people remain rare.