White shark bit dead porpoise found on Maine island

A dead porpoise that washed up on Great Cranberry Island this week had what appeared to be a bite taken out of it by a white shark, according to officials at the Atlantic White Shark Conservancy.

When the porpoise was found on a local beach, it had a large, clean chunk of its midsection ripped out, according to photos taken by Jessica Sanborn and Patrick Allen. The new cavity stretched almost a third of the length of its body.

Amanda Bracy, a member of the Cranberry Isles Select Board, shared photos of the porpoise on an app for reporting shark sightings called Sharktivity that’s run by the Atlantic White Shark Conservancy. An official with the group said that it was “definitely a white shark bite” and estimated the shark was 14 to 16 feet long, according to messages that Bracy shared with the BDN.

The Cranberry Isles are just off the southern end of Mount Desert Island, about one to two miles offshore.

The sighting is now logged for July 1 on the Sharktivity app. Bracy also shared the photos on a Facebook page for Cranberry Isles residents and urged people swimming or wading in the ocean to keep an eye out and be alert.

It’s not the only recent sign of sharks off Maine’s coast. Less than a week earlier, on June 27, a dead grey seal with a large bite mark was spotted near Cape Neddick in southern Maine, according to Sharktivity. It’s also attributed to a white shark.

When sharing the photos on Facebook, Bracy alluded o the killing of a swimmer off Harpwell by a white shark in 2020, which brought a new era of caution and research into the presence of the dangerous sea creatures off Maine’s coast.

“Maine found out the hard way [a] few year[s] ago we also can have fatal attacks in shallow water,” Bracy said.

Correction: An earlier version of this report misstated the distance between Mount Desert Island and the Cranberry Islands.