A great white shark got its Thanksgiving feast over the weekend.
The shark was spotted thrashing around Wellfleet Harbor at high tide Sunday. The predator was apparently devouring a seal off the Cape Cod coast.
The animal’s ultimate holiday banquet was caught on camera by fisherman Keith Rose of the “Kimberly Ann” fishing vessel, according to the Atlantic White Shark Conservancy (AWSC), a nonprofit that supports scientific research and tracks shark sightings.
“There’s a great white finishing off his seal,” the fisherman can be heard saying in one of two videos the conservancy posted.
Rose, stunned, proceeds to tell the other person aboard the Kimberly Ann to put the boat in neutral, as the shark swims away from its bloody prey and nears the vessel.
“This is a great white shark. Check it out, a great white, a beautiful great white shark,” Rose says. “We just witnessed a shark attack. He’s eating that.”
Great white sightings along the coast of Cape Cod so close to winter are not unheard of, though they are much rarer than shark alerts in the summer.
Seasonal shark sightings off the Massachusetts coast have increased in recent years, and the outer Cape is one of the most popular locations for great whites, according to the state Division of Marine Fisheries.
White sharks, another name for great whites, move broadly throughout the North Atlantic, the agency said. When the predator leaves Cape Cod in late fall, it migrates to habitats off the southeastern coast of the U.S. and the Gulf of Mexico.
The AWSC noted Sunday’s sighting in Wellfleet Harbor serves as a reminder that although Massachusetts is beyond its peak shark season, great whites are still in the area.
“We are extremely grateful to the fishing community and other nature observers who have shared their footage of white sharks with us this past season,” the conservancy added. “Public reports are a valuable part of learning more about white shark movement and behavior off our coast.”
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