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Shark Season has officially gotten underway in New England as the waters in the region begin to warm up ahead of the summer. Nantucket had its first great white spotting of the year earlier this month, and another massive beast was spotted doing its thing in a pond on Block Island during Memorial Day weekend.
The coast off Massachusetts has historically been the destination of choice for the many sharks that make their way toward its waters during the warmer months of the year thanks to the sizeable seal population that helps attract the predators to the area.
Attacks on humans tend to be few and far between, but if you make your way to Cape Cod, Nantucket, or Martha’s Vineyard (the last of which served as the stand-in for the fictional Amity Island in Jaws) for a summer getaway, it’s not going to hurt to keep your head on a swivel.
The waters of Rhode Island also attract their fair share of sharks, although you don’t really need to worry about being targeted when you consider there’s been a grand total of two confirmed unprovoked attacks in the state since 1837.
However, shark encounters certainly aren’t unheard of, and some people who were hanging out on Block Island on Monday got to witness a sight that was captured by a woman who was eating dinner at a restaurant overlooking the Great Salt Pond when a shark that looked to be around 20-feet long was making its way across the inlet.
According to The Providence Journal, Jon Dodd, who serves as the executive director of the Atlantic Shark Institute, believes the animal in question was a basking shark, an endangered species that feeds exclusively on the plankton it filters with its mouth and doesn’t pose any threat to people.
That might be the case, but I’d probably still be hopping out of the water with utmost haste if I spotted that thing in my vicinity.
Content shared from brobible.com.