One of the largest great white sharks ever documented was seen earlier this month just north of St. Andrews in Passamaquoddy Bay.
     "It was pretty amazing," says Kingsley Pendleton of Lord's Cove, Deer Island, about the shark, which was estimated to be 19 to 20 feet long. Pendleton, who spends a lot of time on the water, says at first he thought it was a basking shark, but then "it turned at me and came towards me," He then realized it was a great white. "I never saw a fin that big."
     He was about 500 yards off Hardwood Island, northeast of Ministers Island, in a 19-foot Carolina skiff with his wife Kelly. His daughter Kaitlyn and her boyfriend Nathan McNeil were nearby in another boat. The shark came close to Pendleton's boat, and they realized it was longer than the skiff, with its head by the bow and its tail past the stern. "We could see its mouth and eyes."
     "It was a little intimidating," Pendleton says. "It's 5,000 pounds, and my boat is 1,000 pounds with low sides." His daughter put her hand in the water, and he told her to put her selfie stick in instead. "I know it would never attack, but I was a bit nervous," he says. "I should have let it bump [the boat], but I was too nervous."
     They saw the shark five times, as it kept turning toward his skiff. "It seemed half-curious with my boat," he says, adding, "I don't think it would bother you, but it would give you a good fight if it wanted to."
     This is the second great white Pendleton has seen this year, as he saw a smaller one, perhaps seven or eight feet long, while working at a salmon cage site off Deer Island in July. He was standing on a scow with four divers at the time, with the shark right next to them. He also saw one back in 2005. In addition, his niece videoed a great white killing a porpoise off Dinner Island near Deer Island in 2017. "They seem more common now in the last 10 years," Pendleton says, noting that warmer waters may be bringing them farther north.
     John Chisholm, a shark researcher from Plymouth, Mass., who keeps track of sightings and catches of sharks, says the shark Pendleton saw is definitely one of the largest that he knows about that's been documented. "The largest we've seen and tagged was an 18 foot one off Cape Cod." The largest great white that's been measured was at Prince Edward Island in 1983, and Chisholm believes the one Pendleton saw is a little larger. Reportedly the largest great white ever caught was in a weir off White Head, Grand Manan, in June 1930.
     According to Chisholm, great white sharks have always been in the Atlantic Ocean, including from Newfoundland through Gulf of Maine, although they are not common in those areas. He doesn't believe they are changing their geographic range because of warming waters.
     Concerns about great white sharks were heightened after a woman was killed by one when she was swimming while wearing a wetsuit in a cove at Bailey Island in Harpswell, Maine, on July 27. Chisholm, though, says the risk the sharks pose to humans is very low and such incidents are pretty rare. "But people have to pay attention, too," he adds. Humans in the water resemble seals, which sharks prey on, and the human would appear to be the weakest link. "You have to weigh the odds. You're getting into their habitat. You need to take precautions and be prepared."
     Chisholm, who is retired from the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries and has been studying sharks for 40 years, says sharks can be identified by their markings and the shape of their fin. While many have been documented and a couple of hundred in the Atlantic are tagged, the one Pendleton saw was not tagged and had not been documented before. According to Chisholm, that shark could be up to 80 years old. "It makes us realize there's a lot more to these sharks than we know." With the shark never having been documented, he wonders where it's been for that long a time. "There's a lot more we need to do to figure out their life history."