A great white shark pulled a lifeguard underwater near Scarborough Beach State Park in Maine on Saturday afternoon, briefly turning a routine watch into a close call that ended with the guard swimming safely back to shore. The lifeguard was using a rescue torpedo when the shark grabbed the flotation device and dragged him about five to six feet below the surface.
He freed himself from the strap attached to the rescue device, returned to shore and was not injured, though officials said he was a little shaken up afterward. Swimming at Scarborough Beach State Park was closed for about an hour after the encounter, then reopened.
The incident matters because officials said there continues to be a significant number of great white sharks in the waters off Scarborough Beach State Park and Higgins Beach. Marine Resource Officer Daryen Granata said recent observations have included multiple sharks moving through the nearshore waters and sandbar areas, which puts this encounter in the middle of an active stretch for the region.
Town officials also said the reported shark activity and the circumstances of the encounter were very consistent with other activity recorded by experts with the New England Aquarium. That is the part that keeps the story from being just a one-off scare: a lifeguard was pulled underwater, but the shark presence around the beaches has not been treated as unusual by the people tracking it.
For beachgoers, the immediate question is not whether the water was reopened. It was. The more important one is what this kind of nearshore activity means the next time a rescue torpedo goes out in the same waters, because the shark that struck Saturday did not appear in isolation.
