CAPE COD, Mass. — A whale watch group spotted a great white shark devouring a seal in the water off Cape Cod over the weekend, marking the first official sighting of the season.
Dolphin Fleet Whale Watch shared a video of a large shark feeding on a gray seal in Stellwagen Bank near Provincetown around 10 a.m. Saturday with a caption that read, “GRAPHIC CONTENT WARNING.”
“The entire event only lasted around 7 minutes from when we first saw the shark quickly break the surface of the water, in what we think was the initial strike, to when the seal was consumed,” Dolphin Fleet Whale Watch said in a Facebook post.
The shark was estimated to be about 12 feet in length. Researchers later confirmed that the great white sighting and predation were the first of the season off the Cape.
The sighting was also documented on the Atlantic White Shark Conservancy’s Sharktivity app.
“While we have a healthy population of great whites and seals on Cape Cod, predation events like this are not often sighted,” Dolphin Fleet Whale Watch added. “This is the first time our crew has seen a predation in all of our collective years on the water.”
With Memorial Day weekend and the busy summer tourist months approaching, Dolphin Fleet Whale Watch reminded the public to be “shark smart.”
“Sharks are back in the area. This is a great reminder to be shark smart when visiting the Cape Cod National Seashore,” officials said.
There were more than 133 sharks were detected last year off the Cape.
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