Justine Hawkes’ family was about to do some laps off Harpswell – until …
Jaws showed up.
“Caution everyone, hubby has seen 10 sharks just today in the bay,” she posted on her Facebook page.
“There goes our swimming plans. 😳”
It’s not like the Hawkes’ family isn’t comfortable around the ocean.
The family has been lobstering forever off Maine’s coast.
But a bunch of shark sightings – let alone one – is enough to scare off even the most hearty seafarers.
Due to documented great white sightings in two days east of Bailey Island, Harpswell Marine Resources & Harbor Management posted shark-notification flags at Cedar Beach.
Midcoast Maine is perhaps extra cautious when it comes to shark sightings, no matter what species they may be.
Five years ago, Julie Dimperio Holowach, 63, of New York City, died after getting bitten by a great white off Bailey Island.
Holowach, who had swimming with her daughter, became the victim of Maine’s first-ever documented deadly shark attack.
CBS13 reported that two of its viewers told the Portland news outlets they each saw a shark, about 12 feet long, in the same area off Bailey Island earlier this week.
Cory Hawkes, who has been fishing the midcoast for 44 of his 49 years, talked Thursday to The Maine Wire about what went down the day before in his life off the coast of Maine.
“I was hauling traps,” Hawkes related. “You know, anytime I see a fin I go scope it out whether it’s a sunfish or blue dog shark or whatever, and I’d heard rumors.
“I saw a fin. Like six or eight of them – maybe even ten. They were definitely great whites.”
Hawkes said he was about one and a half miles off Gun Point, at the mouth of the New Meadows River, a couple miles from Hermit Island, when he saw not just one fin – but several – in the water.
After nearly a half century on the water, Hawkes said that “this is the first time I’ve ever seen ‘em in the wild, in person.”
“I thought ‘well this is weird,’ so I figured I’d better report it. I reported it to Marine Resources.”
Just another mundane day in the life of a Maine lobsterman minding his own business at sea…
Nearly 50 years at it, hauling traps, and this was a first for Cory Hawkes, who grabbed his camera and started filming.
“Just a commercial fisherman, be happy answering any questions you have,” he said.
A guy who spends his whole life on a lobster boat – and for the first time he’s talking about seeing Jaws, in the flesh so to speak.
And not just “one” Jaw.
“Maybe even 10.” – Cory Hawkes
