A lifeguard was pulled about five to six feet underwater by a great white shark off Scarborough Beach State Park on Saturday afternoon and made it back to shore without injury. Crews responded after the shark grabbed the rescue torpedo he was using during patrol, turning a routine watch into a close encounter in Maine waters.
The incident briefly shut down swimming at Scarborough Beach State Park for about an hour, but the lifeguard was recovering over the weekend. A bystander later reported seeing the flotation device as he started swimming in, a sign of how quickly the moment moved from alarm to escape.
The rescue mattered because it happened at a popular family beach destination at a time when many visitors are trying to squeeze in the last weeks of summer. Daryen Granata said he felt like he had a job to do, and the description of the encounter fits the kind of shark activity experts with the New England Aquarium have been tracking in those waters.
That tracking is what gives the story its uneasy edge. Granata said there continues to be a significant number of great white sharks in the waters off the state park and Higgins Beach areas, and recent observations have included multiple sharks moving through the nearshore waters and sandbar areas. The lifeguard escaped by freeing himself from the strap on the rescue device and swimming safely back, but the fact that he was dragged under while on duty shows how quickly a monitored beach can turn dangerous even when the warning signs are already there.
The unanswered piece is the one that will keep beachgoers watching the water: what, exactly, made the shark seize the flotation device in the first place. For now, the immediate answer is simpler and more sobering — the lifeguard lived, the beach reopened, and the same waters still hold more of the sharks that put him underwater.
