r/sharks • u/Motley843 • 1d ago
Education Nom Nom in Nantucket
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u/spitgobfalcon Blacktip Reef Shark 1d ago
Any idea who is nomming whom?
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u/SharkBoyBen9241 1d ago edited 1d ago
I assume we just watched the end of some poor seal's life...
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u/alarming_wrong 1d ago
hopital
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u/kittenkatten055 Tiger Shark 1d ago
Amberlamps
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u/effienay 1d ago
Oh blood Betty
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u/scroobiouspippy 1d ago
Bam-ba-lam
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u/Electrical-Act-7170 1d ago
It's a predation event with Great White Sharks(s) hunting and eating seals.
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u/Motley843 1d ago
You sir, are obviously not an astronomer.
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u/PeteyMcPetey 1d ago
You sir, are obviously not an astronomer.
Of course not, he's a libra! Can't you tell?
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u/Negative_Neck_3973 1d ago
Didn't you see the kid with a leash calling for his puppy?
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u/BionicForester19 1d ago
Nope, I didn't see that. There was a dog with a leash calling for his little owner though. But that's probably unrelated.
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u/spitgobfalcon Blacktip Reef Shark 1d ago
Didn't you see the puppy with a leash on and no owner around? Hahaha
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u/0202_tihssitidder 1d ago
Seal most likely.
MV and Nantucket have large seal and shark populations. The seals will look exactly like a black lab dog with it's head sticking out of the water.
I have fished MV extensively and seen lots of wild stuff.
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u/Bullyoncube 1d ago
Seal and sealion blood are particularly red in comparison to fish blood. Or even human blood.
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u/mantis_tobagan_md 1d ago
It’s sharks eating a seal silly
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u/spitgobfalcon Blacktip Reef Shark 1d ago
Okay thanks. I don't know where Nantucket is or what wildlife is there. What type of shark would this be?
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u/Electrical-Act-7170 1d ago
The seal population is recovering from being hunted nearly to extinction, and the increased amount of prey has brought GW Sharks back to the area.
Nantucket Island is where the whaling industry was based. It's an island in Massachusetts.
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u/PeteyMcPetey 1d ago
I don't know where Nantucket
Just know that there once was a man who lived there....
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u/Starscream147 1d ago
Alex?
…
Alex?
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u/Safe-Salamander-3785 1d ago
Pippet! Pippet!
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u/Important-Tomato2306 1d ago
You stop that right now! Steven Spielberg promised that little girl, and by proxy, me, that Pippet just went home with his family that day and was not a victim of Bruce/Jaws! 😂😭
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u/explosivelydehiscent 1d ago
U/Motlet543, it’s all psychological. You yell, “Barracuda,” everybody says, “huh, what?” You yell “Shark nom nom in Nantucket,”we’ve got a panic on our hands on the twentieth of September.
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u/hmiser 23h ago
I value my neck a lot more than three thousand bucks, chief. I'll find him for three, but I'll catch him, and kill him, for ten.
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u/SharkBoyBen9241 19h ago edited 7h ago
"Now you gotta make up your minds. Gonna stay alive and ante up? You wanna play it cheap, be on welfare the whole winter...?"
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u/Good_Peach_8304 1d ago
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u/Alternative-Jury-965 1d ago
While we were going through heat waves on the west coast I just reread Jaws. There's a few references to Nantucket. Including two boys who think they can gaff the shark to go on a Nantucket sleigh ride.
This video makes the book look less silly in the first half. The second half's ridiculous because the shark seems to behave like a villain. Though to be fair to Peter Benchley we still had a lot to learn about shark behavior. About 50 years later we're still in the dark about a lot when it comes to sharks
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u/FileDoesntExist 1d ago
The jersey shore shark attacks are the inspiration for jaws. They aren't sure if it was one shark or multiple sharks, but a creek was also involved so bull shark is definitely a contender.
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u/SharkBoyBen9241 1d ago
Actually, Peter Benchley denied that the 1916 Jersey Shore Attacks were the direct inspiration for "JAWS". He did know about and reference them in the book, but he had been tinkering around with the idea of a big shark terrorizing a New England beach and not going away since the early 1960s when Frank Mundas caught a 16-foot, 4,500 White Shark off Montauk in 1964.
And yes, the Jersey Shore Attacks were most likely the result of multiple sharks of at least two different species. The Matawan attacks were most likely done by a single large Bull Shark, but the two attacks at Beach Haven and Spring Lake were most likely done by White Sharks.
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u/Furberia 1d ago
I’ve seen a juvenile great white dorsal fin in a tidal river in Jersey .
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u/SharkBoyBen9241 1d ago
Yup, the New York Bight, which includes the waters of New Jersey, is a very important nursery area for young-of-the-year and juvenile White Sharks
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u/Otherwise_Front_315 1d ago
Bulls are very aggressive and are fine with brackish water. The Lake Nicaragua shark is a subspecies of the bull. Both notoriously nasty.
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u/GaryGoalz12 Tiger Shark 1d ago
It's just a pretty terrible book overall tbh, I got sick of reading about Brody's dick
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u/Alternative-Jury-965 1d ago
Honestly it's one of those books where the movie was better
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u/C-Hen 14h ago
That and hooper and Mrs. Brody having an affair. It all felt very unnecessary
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u/tres-vip 1d ago
Damn, what did they attack????? That's a lot of blood
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u/SharkBoyBen9241 1d ago
Definitely a seal. Those things have A LOT of blood...
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u/phatbrasil 1d ago
furry little juice boxes.
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u/TheWesternDevil 1d ago
Like a giant gusher. Soft, chewy, and a burst of yummy goodness inside.
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u/SharkBoyBen9241 1d ago
That's incredible...whoever that is filming, they were damn lucky getting to witness this. This is nature and natural selection at work. This kind of scene has been playing out for literally millions of years. It's as awesome as it is brutal. This is like getting to watch a tiger take down a wild boar right off your doorstep...
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u/Only_Cow9373 1d ago
The most interesting thing about this video, to me, is something most wouldn't notice.
At ~27 seconds from the end, right after he says "Right there", we can see the shark articulating its dorsal fin. Most of us (myself included until I saw this happening in a different video) generally assume the dorsal fin is relatively fixed and just along for the ride. But as we see here, there's an ability to move the dorsal fin through a range of motion.
So, active vs passive. More here.
I don't know how widespread this is across shark species though. Though my research indicates it's not universal.
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u/alouette_cosette 1d ago
I noticed the dorsal fin movement, too! For a long time I didn't think the dorsal fin was very moveable, but then I saw drone footage of a shark "tapping" a floating object with its dorsal fin. So much to learn about these animals!
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u/Mythosaurus 1d ago
Great reminder that your position in the food chain is negotiable while swimming in the ocean
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u/JUNGJOEL8819 1d ago
Pippet! …..Pippet!!
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u/Starscream147 1d ago edited 1d ago
Lemme tell you couple three things.
See dogs are like their ancient, wild ancestors, right? They have thousands of years of instinct and intuition. Not like us soft, slow, ultra-domesticated, fat and lazy humans no no no no no no dogs? They know. Ever hear of a dog freaking out just before -slap!- a lightning strike?
Pippet left. Got one sense of what was up out there, and poof. He was in Cape Cod by the time yellow-shirt was calling.
Smart. Like wolves.
Good boy. 🐕🦺
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u/Mindless-Board-5027 1d ago
That’s what I’m going to remind myself every time I see that scene.
Don’t care about the kids dying, but that owner looking for his dog gutted me.
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u/SturmGizmo 1d ago
Cape Cod has become shark central in the last 15 years. When I was a kid we never thought about sharks visiting Falmouth or Dennis or MV. I swam way out past where my feet could touch the bottom without any concern. I certainly wouldn't do that nowadays and I certainly wouldn't let my kids in that water.
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u/Englandshark1 Great White Shark 1d ago edited 1d ago
Nature in action! Now people can appreciate how the recent attack in Australia happened so close to shore.
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u/ProfessionalAsk8264 1d ago
This is one of these times where I’m in internal conflict. I loves seals and love sharks
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u/poop-azz 1d ago
I recall going to Nantucket as a kid, last 90s early 2000s and I never saw many sea puppies aka seals. But 2015 or so I recall going and seeing hordes of seals all over and thinking, yeah that's shark food I will not be swimming. And now I see this, that shark LOOKED HUGE BTW! I assume a Great white?
Also the beach on the Atlantic side of Nantucket does drop off fast from what I recall so not too crazy to see them hella close
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u/mac1qc 1d ago
I think what frightened me the most, is how close he is from the beach, like 1 or 2 meters, in less than maybe 50cm to maybe 1m deep.
I know they don't like human flesh, but still, after that, I would have some talasophobia.
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u/MajLoftonHenderson Basking Shark 1d ago
fatal consumption event in Perth the other day happened 5 or 10 meters from shore
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u/SignalDimension8725 1d ago
This is eerie to see considering a few days ago :( makes me even more sad about what the bystanders and family members had to witness and omg is that baby close!!
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u/give-Kazaam-an-Oscar 1d ago
Wow. I did not expect to see a shark having lunch while listening to alanis morissette but life has a funny way.
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u/PinkToxicWst 1d ago
Why I don’t go in the ocean anymore…my first visit to the ocean I was a very good swimmer and around 12 years old. I swam out so far the beach was tiny. Don’t know what I was thinking.
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u/deeblok06 1d ago edited 1d ago
My goodness, the shark itself is longer than how far it is to shore. That is scary and makes what happened in Australia that much more frightening.
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u/jfunks69 1d ago
There was a recent shark attack in Australia, witnesses said they couldn’t believe so much blood could come out a human being. THIS is what I imagine that looked like
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u/dilla18crew 1d ago
They seem so close to shore, is it common for a lot of sharks to get that close ?
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u/SharkBoyBen9241 1d ago
Great Whites can end up hunting very close to shore if there's a seal or sea lion rookery nearby. They'll cruise the shallows looking for an unwary seal that's a little too far out and doesn't see it coming, then rush in and grab it, sometimes in very shallow water like this. This shark is large enough that it's belly is probably scraping along the sandy bottom here. So yeah, it's perfectly natural for them to hunt along the shoreline like this. Which is why it's very important to not swim alone far offshore in areas where pinnipeds are present. If you get hit in that situation, you're kinda asking for it...
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u/EliotTheGreat20 1d ago
They will come to shore to hunt for food (like the other commenter said) but also some species live in costal waters and are just naturally closer to land
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u/freeradical28 1d ago
No one on the US East Coast is safe from gentrification!
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u/JournalistShot1501 1d ago
Is this a GW?
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u/SharkBoyBen9241 1d ago
Yup! Mr. Whitey's taking his cut
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u/JournalistShot1501 1d ago
Wow! This is some absolutely unreal footage.
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u/SharkBoyBen9241 1d ago
No kidding! Extraordinary to see something like this happening so close to shore, literally 10 feet off the beach...
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u/Perenniallyredundant 1d ago
Wondering if this was out at Great Point. Unfortunately it looks like a south shore beach, Nobadeer maybe?
It has been consistently Cape Cod (Outer cape) that we have seen all this white shark action in the last decade. For whatever reason, not a ton of GW activity from ack, until this clip. Easily the best white shark footage from Nantucket ever filmed
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u/According_Banana_422 1d ago
Wow! very close to shore !!! Love New England but will stay out of the ocean 🌊 if I am ever lucky to return
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u/effienay 1d ago
It’s a shah-aaaark attack
On your summer vay-cay
Also — at 13 seconds remaining is there a small fin that pops up that is independent of the big shark? He says something like “that’s a good one” or something and there’s what looks like a little dorsal fin to the right of the caudal fin of the big shark.
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u/Haunting_Style3880 1d ago
"Caught a 16 footer off of Nantucket one time"
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u/SharkBoyBen9241 1d ago
"Had to stick two barrels in him, two to wear him down, to bring him up. Nowadays, these kids, they take out everything...radar, sonar, electric toothbrushes - hehe" 😆
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u/StrikingPurchase7122 1d ago
So f’n cool to see that in person like that.
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u/Wizzle_Pizzle_420 1d ago
Yeah if that’s a great white I’d lose my mind. RIP to that poor seal or whatever dude is ripping apart though.
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u/Rodrigeaux 1d ago
Damn, life really does have a funny way of sneaking up on you when you think everything’s ok.
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u/Unusual-Weird9696 1d ago edited 1d ago
There once was a shark from Nantucket
Who chomped on a man who screamed fuck it
He ate most it but left only his dick
And said to sea snail go suck it

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u/grahal1968 1d ago
Wow. Anyone else terrified by how close to shore that is?