Cape Cod thrust back into the limelight.
A 20-year-old man boogie boarding at a beach near Cape Cod, Mass. was attacked by a shark yesterday and killed. It was the first shark attack in Cape Cod in 80 years.
Local police released the statement:
Around noontime today (9/15) a male swimmer at Newcomb Hollow Beach was bitten by what is believed to be a shark. The male victim mid 20’s was pulled from the water, provided emergency first aid to include CPR. The male victim was transported to Cape Cod Hospital by the Wellfleet Fire Department, were he passed from the injuries.
The name and info of the victim is being held till proper notification.
Wellfleet PD is working with the National Park Service and the MA State Police on this investigation.
And the Associated Press interviewed a local fisherman:
“I was that guy on the beach screaming, ‘Shark, shark!’ It was like right out of that movie Jaws. This has turned into Amity Island real quick out here.”
Amity Island is, of course, the fictional Cape Cod town terrorized by a giant great shark in Steven Spielberg’s Jaws.
It has long been believed that Jaws was based on a series of 1916 shark attacks that terrorized New Jersey but the author of the book denied this and said he based his work off the 1964 story of a fisherman who harpooned a 4500 lbs shark off the coast of Long Island.

To be honest, I didn’t really know that great whites were an Atlantic thing. I thought the east coast’s big worry was bull sharks. I thought Hawaii’s big worry was tiger sharks. I thought the west coast and Australia’s west coast’s big worry was great white sharks. As a lifelong west coaster (except for a few childhood years spent in Papua New Guinea), I always felt a little proprietary about the great white.
I suppose I’ll have to adjust my worldview (again).