Shark Attack!

With Discovery Channel’s famous “Shark Week” put off for a few weeks by the Summer Olympics, it’s only fitting that Massachusetts saw its first shark attack since a fatal attack in 1936. While officials have not definitively confirmed that it was a shark that bit a swimmer in Truro, MA (only an hour and a half from Falmouth), experts speculate that a Great White is responsible for sending the man to the hospital.

Eyewitness accounts of a fin and the presence of seals in the water leads the state Department of Fish and Game’s Division of Marine Fisheries to believe that the bite is the work of a Great White. Officials are unable to speculate as to the size of the shark or the reasons for the attack. Only upon examining the swimmers wound and direct testimony from the swimmer will experts be able to claim that a shark was responsible.

The swimmer was transported to Mass General Hospital in Boston where he underwent surgery to repair the wounds from the alleged bite. The last reported shark attack in Massachusetts was in 1936, when Joseph Troy, Jr. of Dorchester was bitten and dragged underwater by a Great White in Mattapoisett. Troy died that night on the operating table.

The attack occurred at Ballston Beach, part of a stretch of beach that ranges from Provincetown to Chatham. The stretch of beach is unsupervised by lifeguards but Truro is now considering putting guards in place for the remainder of the summer.

Miraculously, the alleged Great White attack has not deterred swimmers from getting in the water at Ballston Beach. Fourteen year-old Ellie Raycroft of Sherborn, MA, said the following day, “I mean there’s lots of stuff in the water” shortly after splashing around with her brother, Cameron.  Ellie has more guts than I do!

Article courtesy of the Cape Cod Times.

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