Two Cape Cod surfers had a close call with an ‘aggressive and agitated’ 10-foot great white shark that almost attacked one of their legs forcing them to hit the shark and make an escape for safety.
Ray Trautz and his cousin Pete Emond were surfing off Coast Guard Beach on Saturday when Trautz noticed the great white.
‘Pete was sitting on his board and I was standing on mine when I looked over my shoulder and a 10′ great white shark was on track right at Pete’s legs,’ Trautz said in a Facebook post.
‘The shark even turned on its side as if to take a leg, in that moment I yelled SHAARRRRK as Pete was still unaware.’
‘As I yelled I stabbed my paddle into the water at the back of the shark and it violently turned at me, tail and head thrashing back and forth erupting the water,’ Trautz said.
Ray Trautz (pictured) and his cousin Pete Emond were surfing off Coast Guard Beach on Saturday when Trautz noticed the great white.
Trautz posted a picture of Coast Guard Beach. He struck the shark with is paddle as it was eyeing up his cousins leg
‘The sharks massive tail section almost hit Pete in the face. I was yelling for Pete to go and get to shore as the shark circled behind me very aggressive and agitated.’
The surfer said he was able to flee unscathed when a small wave came and he rode it to the Massachusetts shore.
‘We both escaped unharmed and a little shaken. I’ve seen a hundred white sharks while surfing but this takes the top of all my shark interactions,’ Trautz said.
Between October 18 and 19, the Atlantic White Shark Conservancy tagged eight great whites on the coast of Cape Cod.
According to their logbook activity, October has been the third busiest month for shark activity along the Cape in recent years.
In July, Cape Cop was named as one of the world’s new great white shark hotspots after a study which monitored the coastline from 2015 to 2018 found that a staggering 800 individual great white sharks had visited the waters.
The study, which is the first ever white shark estimate in the North Atlantic Ocean, was published in the Marine Ecology Progress Series journal and concluded that ‘Cape Cod is among the larger white shark hotspots worldwide.’
Drone footage showed sharks along the coast of Long Island over the Fourth of July weekend
According to the International Shark Attack File, the US is the shark attack capital of the world having 41 of 57 confirmed attacks worldwide in 2022.
The Northeast saw a slew of shark attacks this summer and footage captured droves of sharks along the coast.
Swimming was banned on parts of nearby Nantucket after two bloodthirsty sharks were seen ripping apart seals just off the shore.
South of Cape Cod, drone footage captured captured 50 sharks off the coast of Long Island over the Fourth of July.
A 15-year-old girl reported being bitten at Robert Moses State Park in Suffolk County, New York, prompting officials to fly the drone out over the water that spotted the group.
On July 3, a teenage surfer was mauled by a shark after heading out into the waves on his surfboard off the coast of Fire Island, New York.
A notorious 395-lb shark named Jekyll was spotted off the coast of Maine at the end of June.
Cape Cod (pictured) saw 800 individual great white sharks in its waters from 2015 to 2018
Mariah Meyer, a shark diver and marine biologist at One Ocean Diving, Haleiwa, Hawaiii, gave her advice on how to survive a shark attack.
‘First stay calm and remember that we’re not a part of the sharks diet but we don’t want to act like prey in the water so limit any erratic swimming or splashing,’ she said.
‘Secondly, when you do encounter a shark in the wild, don’t take your eyes off of that shark.
‘Making eye-contact with the sharks around you will let them know that you’re a predator too and not a prey item,’ said Meyer.