A great white shark was spotted Thursday in Frenchman Bay off Bar Harbor feeding on a seal, according to an Ellsworth man.
John DeRaps posted on Facebook, “I’ve been on the water my whole life and I have never seen a great white, this one was feasting on a seal today.”
DeRaps posted a photo of the shark, which he said was in the Ironbound channel, Thursday, August 13.
He said he initially thought the shark was a whale, but then it tossed a seal “like a rag doll” and realized that it was not a whale.
The sighting comes shortly after a shark reportedly dragged Greg Wilfert, a 71-year-old life guard, underwater via his floatation device in Scarborough.
“I thought a boat had come by and grabbed my rescue can because I got pulled under, and I realized right away that it was not a boat, that it had to have been a great white,” Wilfert told WHDH News.
Wells Beach, also in southern Maine, prohibited swimming Wednesday due to a juvenile great white shark sighting near the beach.
There are two shark acoustic receiver sites on Mount Desert Island and several along the Maine coast, part of the Maine Department of Marine Resources Inshore White Shark Monitoring (ISWM) program.
Great white sharks (Carcharodon carcharias) prefer waters between 50 and 80 degrees. Their ranges can overlap and interactions with humans are rare. Their bodies are shaped like torpedos, which helps with efficient swimming. Their white underbellies give them their name. The rest of their bodies are slate gray. They can live up to 80 years.
Maine waters host eight different types of sharks.
In 2020, Julie Dimperio Holowach, a 63-year-old New York woman who summered in Maine, was killed by a white shark while swimming near Bailey Island, which is by Harpswell. She is the only shark fatality in Maine in recent history.
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