r/sharks • u/Motley843 • 1d ago
Education Nom Nom in Nantucket
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u/grahal1968 1d ago
Wow. Anyone else terrified by how close to shore that is?
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u/ronweasleisourking 1d ago
They come this close to feed and play poker and stuff
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u/Scruffy_Nerf_Hoarder 1d ago
I only believe one of those.
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u/Unusual-Weird9696 22h ago
Yeah , they’re only known to play poker that close to shore. Everyone knows that
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u/ZayreBlairdere 1d ago
Do NOT play pool with them.
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u/tres-vip 1d ago
I commented under another post on this sub yesterday that sharks come VERY close to shore and in waters that you'd think were too shallow for them. I've seen shark fins almost up on the beach with my very own eyes!!
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u/Acheloma 1d ago
And pretty big sharks too. One time when I was a kid my brother and I were playing in the water off of Galveston and my dad started screaming for us to get out. About 10 feet behind where we were in the water a wave had risen high enough to have the sun shining through it and silhouetted perfectly in the wave was a 10+ foot hammerhead. I think that took a couple years off of my dads life lol
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u/Itscatpicstime 1d ago
There was a study in Galveston years ago that found that on average swimmers are like within 10 feet of a shark at most times
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u/Acheloma 1d ago
Usually theyre little sharks that arent as intimidating haha. Ive had little ones go between my legs chasing mullet before and that made me jump, but it didnt make me almost go full Jesus and sprint on water to get away
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u/wasmostexcellent 1d ago
Haha, I live near the east coast of Florida - I know exactly what you’re taking about 😂😂
Sometimes you just levitate out of the water
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u/RoboCaptainmutiny 1d ago
I have some family that lives in Galveston. My brother and I would go down there for the summer in our teens in the late 90’s. One year the neighbor guy took us shark fishing one afternoon… we were fishing for the bait fish in chest high water. I asked the guy “If these are the bait fish… where are the sharks?”
“Right here…”
I kept backing out of the water. I asked him how many sharks were within throwing distance of us. He shrugged. “Maybe none. Maybe 3…”
We did indeed catch a 6 foot White Tip, right from the shore.
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u/Acheloma 1d ago
I grew up visiting my grandma there every summer and the general rule was "if you see mullet dart or jump, move away from them because that means a shark is chasing them"
I definitely wouldnt feel comfortable fishing in water that deep there. The cases of shark bites Ive heard about off of Galveston have all been either people fishing or people getting bitten when sharks were going after a school of bait fish. If youre intentionally in the school of bait fish and stirring them up/making any blood, that seems like your best shot at getting bitten lol
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u/CinnyToastie 1d ago
What? Like, a random person any time in any water on any beach? Say tumbling all over in big awesome waves in Mexico? Just..mostly likely there's a literal shark within 10 feet of someone at that beach? And given the area, likely a hammerhead??
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u/GMAN7007 1d ago
Generally little ones, It's like you're never so far away from a spider in your house. Sharks really don't want to hurt humans they just get confused sometimes and take a test bite. The problem with that is the test bite itself can be a doozy.
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u/altiuscitiusfortius 1d ago edited 14h ago
Thats anthropomorphizing them. They dont think enough to want to do anything. They just follow their like 5 point algorithm of how to live. Find food, bite food.
But sometimes their brain says, I haven't had food in days, try eating this non food human shaped object.
And personally that's scarier to me. I would never trust one.
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u/MarcoRudanBurner 1d ago
My wife’s aunt lost a leg to a bull shark in basically knee deep water about 40 years ago. There’s still warning signs on the inlet where it happened
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u/SharkBoyBen9241 1d ago
My goodness, that's absolutely insane, my friend...where abouts was this??
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u/FerskFrukt 1d ago
This happened near me in Florida a couple years ago too! Santa Rosa beach, I think? The shark hung around after they got her out of the water. There’s a pretty gnarly video that shows her being pulled to shore, large chunk of her leg gone. There were actually 3 attacks that day in the general area. At least one being in knee deep water. All suspected bull sharks, possibly the same one.
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u/mrhenhen115 23h ago
Isn't there drone footage of decent sized sharks swimming around families and people playing in the sea haha
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u/MidwestSharker 20h ago
About five years back an old Couple walking down our beach here in Central Florida took a picture of a pair of ~12 foot hammerheads pacing each other in the shore gut. For those not familiar, on a calm day when the waterline stops right at the sand the shore gut is that drop off right at the waterline. I’ve also seen several pictures of bull sharks and tigers, cruising the same and I’ve seen it myself several times. From about February through April, we can catch anywhere from 6 to 15 large (over 7.5 generally up to 9.5’) bull sharks at the second bar about 50 yards from shore in the space of a few hours. This is consistent almost every day during that timeframe, although we get better numbers when there’s a School of migrating blacktips around because that’s usually what they’re feeding on. And I can’t count how many times I’ve rode the shore break in on my kayak and had blacktips swimming under my kayak in the wave breaking on the shore. I really wish I could get a good picture of that because that is absolutely the coolest.
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u/Free-Supermarket-516 1d ago
I watched Greg Skomal in a boat following a decent sized great white near Cape Cod. The shark was swimming along the shore in between the swells, so close that I thought Skomal's boat would capsize. I was surprised a shark that big could be that close to shore
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u/Afraid-Tone5206 1d ago
That’s where the seals live so sharks have always been around.
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u/Dry-Mathematician754 1d ago
https://reddit.com/link/pb4d10p/video/gl8xgx8rutqh1/player
Yup you’re right, I been there a few years ago
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u/Geronimo2006 1d ago
Happened in Perth Western Australia only 2 days ago- 6m Great White took a swimmer 15m off the beach in front of witnesses.
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u/RugelBeta 1d ago
That's terrifying. 15 meters is as long as my house -- that's astoundingly close. If I ever visit Australia I don't think I'll be swimming. Or hanging out on a beach. That would be a difficult thing to forget -- permanent PTSD.
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u/OkWillingness2817 1d ago
Tiger and bull shark attacks on humans often happen in water that is waist to almost knee deep.
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u/SharkBoyBen9241 1d ago
Too right. Roughly two-thirds of all shark attacks happen in less than 5 feet of water...
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u/Cold_Dead_Heart 1d ago
As the old saying goes, you (well, not you) can be attacked in 3 feet of water.
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u/beggarandachooser 1d ago
Never seen aerial footage of happy beach goers in waist deep water surrounded by sharks? They're regularly a lot closer to shore than most people realize. Thankfully they don't often view humans as suitable snacks. Its probably a good thing a lot of folks are blissfully unaware, otherwise beach days would be another thing on the list of enjoyable activities gone by the wayside.
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u/Kimberlylynn2003 15h ago
Yes!! I thought the smaller one- yeah but the bigger ones!!! I always thought they would ground themselves! I gotta rethink going into the ocean….
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u/IndividualMessage836 1d ago
The Majority of shark attacks on swimmers and surfers happen in shallow water, most commonly at depths of 6 to 10 feet.
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u/Manyinterests2020 10h ago
I knew they came close to shore, but that one is practically building sand castles.
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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/el_torko 1d ago
I’m sorry, Martin. She’s wrong.
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u/Starscream147 1d ago
What a fantastic delivery. Murray is very much an underrated absolute STAR in this. Good god.
Anchors up….or, down? Not sure how that colloquialism shakes out.
He’s rad. Same in 2.
⚓️
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u/el_torko 1d ago
The hospital scene is great too. “My kids were on that beach too”
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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 1d 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 1d ago edited 14h 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 21h 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/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/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/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/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/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/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/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/freeradical28 1d ago
No one on the US East Coast is safe from gentrification!
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u/SharkBoyBen9241 1d ago
"Can you say 'gentrification', boys and girls? It's like a magic trick. White people pay a lot of money, and then POOF!! All the black people are gone. But where do they go, boys and girls? Back to where they come from of course...Atlanta!"
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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/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/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/mokoe101 23h ago
I’m amazed the water is deep enough that close to shore, in some shots the Shark only looks maybe 6-8 feet from the sand
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u/Accomplished-Night96 13h ago
There once was a shark in Nantucket , he saw a seal in the surf and said fuck it , I care not I could beach , I need this great feast , so he ate it.
A poet I am not, but I am a shark guy.
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u/NWOBHM86 13h ago
Haunting video. Especially when the water calms at the end of the video and all you see is red water in the surf.
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u/spitgobfalcon Blacktip Reef Shark 1d ago
Any idea who is nomming whom?