A scuba diver who came face-to-teeth with a shark used a camera to fend off the animal when it came at him — and he has the frightening video to prove it.
Scott MacNichol, 30, was shaken up but uninjured after a porbeagle shark apparently mistook his camera equipment for food Saturday while MacNichol was diving near Eastport, off the eastern tip of Maine.
Videos
Additional Photos
He estimated the shark was 8 feet long and weighed 300 pounds.
MacNichol saw the shark swimming above him while he filmed the ocean floor under empty salmon pens as part of an environmental assessment for Cooke Aquaculture Inc. The shark then came at him, jabbing at the camera with its snout. In the video, its sharp teeth fill the frame before it swims off.
“He took a couple of bites at the camera. When he did that, I was pretty much petrified,” MacNichol said Wednesday. “If you watch the video, you can hear me screaming underwater.”
Porbeagles are cold-water sharks that have a similar body shape and tail to mako and great white sharks. Their diet is primarily herring, mackerel and other bony fish.
The shark was probably drawn to MacNichol by the camera’s light, batteries and silver casing, said Chris Heinig, owner of MER Assessment Corp., who was aboard the dive boat on the surface when the shark lunged at MacNichol.
“I think it came up and bumped the camera to see what it was,” Heinig said. “But I honestly don’t think the shark attacked Scott.”
Hundreds of shark attacks have occurred in Florida, California and other warm-water states, but they are rare in New England.
The last fatal shark attack in New England was in 1936, when a boy died in Massachusetts, according to the International Shark Attack File at the University of Florida’s Museum of Natural History.
MacNichol, a resident of Perry in Washington County, has been diving commercially since 1998. He took a day off from diving after the attack, but doesn’t plan to give it up.
“People get in car accidents every day, and that doesn’t keep them from driving,” he said.
Send questions/comments to the editors.
