Great White Shark Rips Apart Seal, Bloodying Water Off Cape Cod

A graphic video released by the Atlantic White Shark Conservancy (AWSC) on Monday shows a great white shark feasting on a seal in the waters off Chatham, a town in Barnstable County, Massachusetts. The video, captured by scientists, shows the shark ripping apart the seal and bloodying the water near the conservancy’s research boat.

"Welcome to 'Shark City!' is the message that can be read at the end of the video, which had both close up footage and aerial photographs of the attack. The AWSC — a nonprofit that supports great white shark research, education, and conservation in Cape Cod — said the video was captured Oct. 21. The video was viewed over 30,000 times on Facebook and had received hundreds of shares at the time of publishing this story.

"Our team got incredible footage of a white shark eating a seal off Chatham," the group posted on Facebook with the video.

When the waters start getting colder off Cape Cod, the number of sharks in the area reduces but the video shows sharks are still swimming in the area.

People associated with the group have been tagging sharks over the weekend as the AWSC continues to track the movements of sharks.

Great white sharks have been increasing in the Cape Cod area. In June, experts predicted there would be an increase in shark sightings off Cape Cod because of an increasing population of grey seals. In 2014, Massachusetts Marine Fisheries recorded 68 shark sightings and the number jumped to 147 by 2016. Some feared that an increase in the number of sharks may also lead to shark attacks.

“It’s not if, it’s when, in terms of somebody being fatally attacked,” Greg Skomal, a great white shark biologist with the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries, told the National Geographic in 2016. “We’ve got seals being eaten within 100 meters of surfers. Think about that. Cape Cod is coexisting right now, but we haven’t had the attack; we haven’t had that fatal attack.”

This is not the first time that a shark has attacked a seal so close to the beach in the Cape Cod region. There have been several incidents in August when a great white shark attacked a seal on a Chatham Beach. The shark feasting on seals have raised concerns that the predator could also attack beachgoers. Because of this, it is very necessary that people take precautions while going into waters where sharks are spotted.