ORLEANS, Mass. — A shark seen feasting on a seal just feet off a Cape Cod beach Monday sent swimmers and surfers scrambling to shore.
Thayer Wade captured video of the gruesome sight on Nauset Beach in Orleans, the shark mercilessly tearing at the seal as the water turned red.
Wade, of Needham, had been sitting on the beach reading, but his uncle, Pat O’Brien, of Waltham, had been swimming when they heard thrashing and screaming.
“They were like, ‘Shark! Shark! Get out of the water! Shark!’” O’Brien told Boston 25 News Monday. “I looked back and I could see all this blood coming out of the seal, just shooting out of him.”
After O’Brien got out of the ocean, he noticed two teenage surfers struggling to return to the shore.
“We were yelling at them, ‘Swim! Swim! Get out of the water! Get out of the water! Shark! Shark!’” O’Brien said, explaining that he and another man approached one of the boys and grabbed him by the arm. “He’s like, ‘Help me! Help me!’ So we pulled him out. We got him out okay, and then the seal just kept going down, and the blood was just everywhere.”
With assistance, the second surfer also made it to shore.
“The guy who I pulled out, he thought his friend was dead, because he just looked down and he saw the blood and he heard the screaming,” O’Brien said. “The seal made this awful sound. The seal was like screaming.”
Thayer’s video shows stunned beachgoers lined up along the shore watching the feeding frenzy.
“Just unbelievable. I’ve been going to that beach my whole life and have never seen something like that in the water,” Thayer said. “Something you don’t see every day but amazing.”
O’Brien, who had feared someone was going to be attacked, was overcome with a wave of relief once everyone had escaped the water.
“I’m just glad the boys are okay,” O’Brien said. “No human life was lost. I’m sorry for the seal, though, of course.”
The Atlantic White Shark Conservancy confirmed a number of shark sightings across the Cape Monday.
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