Panic spread across a popular Cape Cod beach on Monday when a shark attacked a seal just yards off Nauset Beach in Orleans, Massachusetts.
CBS Boston reports there have been about nine shark sightings on the Cape since Monday, but the scariest was the one the one in Orleans that shut down the beach just after 1:30 p.m. local time.
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Onlooker, Thayer Wade shot video of the gruesome attack saying the shark was hunting very close to shore.
“I looked up and saw the dorsal fin and the tail of what was a great white shark,” said Wade of the video that begins moments after the shark took a big chunk out of the seal.
“You didn’t know if it was a seal or a human so it was kind of a heart stopping moment,” he continues.
Panicky beachgoers scrambled to summon loved ones from the water who said the gentle waves were filling with blood as the shark kept stalking the seal and moving towards the shoreline.
Two New York City teenagers surfing in the waters saw the attack up close, screaming to each other to swim back, despite one’s foot getting tangled amid the panic in his surfboard cord.
As luck would have it, everyone got out of the water safely, but watched helplessly as the fatally injured seal struggled to survive his fatal bite.
Beachgoers though have voiced concern and fear that sometime soon, the next victim won’t be a seal.
“Definitely gives me a different perspective on a beach I’ve been to my whole life,” Wade said. “I’ll probably think twice about jumping in the water.”
Due to an increase in shark sightings, a number of beaches have closed their grounds on the Outer Cape in the past week.
Photo credit: Twitter / @patrickobrien36
