Multiple dead seals with shark bites washed up along Cape Cod in the last couple of days, while several great whites were spotted close to shore during the peak of shark season.
Also, Wellfleet lifeguards over the weekend helped out a large fish that’s often confused with great white sharks — after an ocean sunfish ended up very close to shore at Newcomb Hollow Beach.
While the majority of the great white shark action is along the Outer Cape, the dead seals with shark bites were found in Cape spots away from the popular outer beaches.
One of the seals washed up in Truro’s Pamet Harbor off of Cape Cod Bay, and another seal was found near Chatham’s Hardings Beach off of the Nantucket Sound.
“Dead seal washed up near Pamet Harbor jetty with shark bites,” reads the white shark sighting on Atlantic White Shark Conservancy’s Sharktivity app on Monday.
“Deceased seal with shark bite,” reads the Chatham report on the Sharktivity app.
August is now the busiest month for shark activity along the Cape, as the apex predators hunt for seals close to shore. Last year, August had the most shark detections at receivers, according to the Atlantic White Shark Conservancy’s Logbook. There were 66,097 detections of tagged sharks in August last year, followed by September in second place with 47,177 detections.
Other shark sightings from the weekend included a great white spotted 20 yards from shore off of Nauset Beach in Orleans, and a shark seen off the shoreline north of Truro’s Head of the Meadow Beach.
Meanwhile in Wellfleet over the weekend, a large fish led to a response from lifeguards. A Mola mola, also known as an ocean sunfish, got very close to shore at Newcomb Hollow Beach.
“Even our amazing lifeguards wouldn’t be able to rescue an 1,000+ pound animal if it ended up on the beach, so a few of our guards and junior guards paddled out to try to create a soft barrier between the Mola mola and the shoreline,” Wellfleet Lifeguards wrote.
“We hoped this guy or gal would take the hint that the waves weren’t quite good enough for body surfing today and swim out to sea,” the lifeguards added. “Luckily, that’s exactly what happened. We were glad to see it on its way to deeper, less treacherous waters!”
People often confuse ocean sunfish for great whites when they spot the fin from a distance. But the Mola mola fin up close looks quite different from a shark fin, the lifeguards said.
“If you ever see a fin at our beaches, come ask the lifeguards about it,” the Wellfleet Lifeguards wrote. “Chances are we’ve already seen it, know what kind of animal it belongs to, and if it was a shark fin we’d have already gotten you out of the water.”
