With multiple recent sightings, a stunning National Geographic photograph, and a new scientific report confirming their growing presence, Maine’s great white sharks are more on the public’s mind than ever before. But five years after the state’s sole confirmed fatal shark attack off Bailey Island, not much has actually changed in Harpswell.
Though locals and visitors are now more aware of the sharks with whom they share the sea, the familiar rhythms of a Harpswell summer persist.
On a recent hot, hazy July day, teenagers swam in Mackerel Cove; children waded in the shimmering, shallow water at Cedar Beach; and fishermen hollered at people standing on the dock, asking how many lobsters they’d like to buy.
“Lobstermen are still hauling and the beaches are still full,” said Bernie Johnson, manager at Glen’s Lobsters on Mackerel Cove, near the site where a 63-year-old woman was killed by a great white shark in July 2020. “It was a tragedy, and she was a nice woman, but there’s always been sharks up in here.”
Johnson isn’t wrong.
Shark-tooth archaeological evidence published in American Antiquity in 2012 suggests the creatures have been summer visitors to the Gulf of Maine for at least 1,000 years. But 20th-century trophy fishing, excessive bycatch, and the decline of marine mammal food sources led to a steep drop-off in their numbers near the turn of the last century. According to a federal report published in 2014 by the National Institutes of Health, East Coast great white populations may have dropped as much as 73% by the dawn of the 21st century.
Now, with seal populations on the rise since federal protections took effect in the 1970s, plus fast-warming waters in the Gulf of Maine, great whites are making a comeback.
A new study published in Frontiers in Marine Science in March by a team of New England-based scientists showed 107 different great white sharks visiting Maine between 2012 and 2023. Most were detected within half a mile from shore, in less than 65 feet of water.
Scientists tracked sharks tagged off Cape Cod with acoustic sensor buoys placed along Maine’s coast. Data collected showed that shark visits peaked from July through September.
The shark activity was concentrated at several sites in eastern Casco Bay, including Seguin Island, Phippsburg’s Head Beach, and Harpswell’s Ragged Island.
Shawn Baumgartner, a Bailey Island lobsterman, said he saw a white shark off Ragged Island on July 15, just as he was setting a string of traps.
“It kicked and threw a little water,” Baumgartner said.
Earlier in July, famed National Geographic underwater photographer Brian Skerry snapped a photo of a 10-foot-long great white 15 miles off the coast of Harpswell. Later in the month, a shark warning flag went up on Cedar Beach after two sightings were posted on social media.
Still, the recent report stated Maine has relatively few great white sharks when compared to hot spots such as Massachusetts and South Carolina. The risk of being bitten is very low — and the public seems to understand that.
“I’d still go in the water,” said Doug Prime, of Brunswick, who was enjoying the sea breeze at Land’s End in July. “It’s scarier to watch ‘Jaws’ on TV.”
This summer marks the 50th anniversary of that blockbuster horror film, which first gave great white sharks international notoriety and inspired near-universal fear.
The fatal shark attack five years ago brought the national news media to Bailey Island. Cable television news trucks clogged the island’s single thoroughfare as news anchors flew in to give breathless updates. But the negative attention doesn’t seem to have stuck. Prime’s parents, who’ve vacationed in Maine for most of their lives, said they hadn’t heard of the incident.
Up at the Land’s End gift shop, which sells plastic and wooden shark toys along with nearly anything you can print the word “Maine” on, merchandiser Julie Oetinger said tourists occasionally ask about the shark attack, but only in a vague way.
“They’re just curious, rather than scared,” Oetinger said. “It’s pure curiosity.”
Down the road, in Mackerel Cove, a pair of teenage girls dove off a dock and swam to a float, where they helped a lobsterman drag crates to his boat. Both said they never think of sharks. A man standing on the dock, who didn’t want to give his name, called the fatal attack a “fluke.”
“My wife swims down here every morning,” he said.
Linda Muller, a retired nurse practitioner from Brunswick, was swimming at Mitchell Field, on the other side of town, just as the 2020 attack was happening. Relatives in Ohio had already heard the news and called to make sure she was alright before she even got home.
She still swims in Harpswell waters, but said she thinks about sharks sometimes and takes a few precautions.
“I wouldn’t swim in Mackerel Cove or anywhere where commercial fishing happens, with fishermen cleaning fish, throwing back bait,” Muller said. “Sharks can smell that stuff.”
With another bright summer day winding down, men on Jet Skis jumped each other’s wakes around Bailey Island, couples strolled the gravel bar by Cook’s Lobster & Ale House, and boaters slow-cruised beneath the Cribstone Bridge. Life seemed normal, with no sharks in sight.
Over at Cedar Beach, Shawn Menear, of Durham, stood shin-deep in the water, talking with friends. He said he remembers the tragic shark news from five years ago.
“But it didn’t occur to me today,” Menear said, waving his hand around the gorgeous summer scenery. “I think of that kind of thing as random.”
