Great white shark SPOTTED near Maine shoreline where woman was mauled to death in 2020
MAINE, US: A great white shark was captured on a 32-second video taken by a woman called Kasey Lyn Watkins, near the Maine shoreline on August 20. The shark, spotted near Portland's Cliff Island, was eating the fish while the water slowly turned red.
According to The Sun, the white shark was seen just yards from where a woman was mauled to death in July 2020. Julie Dimperio Holowach, 63, was swimming in Mackerel Cove off Bailey Island in Harpswell with her daughter when she was fatally bitten by a shark. As per WWD, two kayakers got Holowach and her daughter Alex to shore but she was declared dead at the scene. Her daughter was not injured. Later, a tooth fragment recovered from her body was examined, and officials confirmed it belonged to a great white shark. Her death marked Maine’s first fatal shark attack.
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According to BBC via Press Herald, before the 2020 attack, an incident took place in the year 2010 that involved a scuba diver fending off a porbeagle shark. But the diver was not injured. Talking about the Holowach's attack, Maine Marine Resources Commissioner Patrick Keliher said at the time, as reported by NBC, that the bite was from a different species of shark. He tagged the attack as “highly unusual" and added, “The rarity of this event does not mean it’s not going to happen again."
As per News Center Maine, Department of Marine Resources' marine scientist Matthew Davis said, "Some of the shark work we do here now at the Maine Department of Marine Resources was spurred on following the really tragic event. It caused a lot of interest in tracking sharks because previously we didn't have much of a pulse on white shark activity here in Maine." The report stateed him saying that "the department has been collecting long-term data on shark movement using dozens of passive acoustic receivers deployed off Maine's coast, which detected 29 different white sharks last year." Davis further said, "If we can prove this is a good use of funds for public safety, then in the future we could potentially purchase more." According to Tracking Sharks, a total of 34 shark attack bites took place in 2022.
