Buddies out mackerel fishing today came upon a giant great white shark like they’ve never seen before “bumping” and “nudging” a dead whale and then circling their boat off Martha’s Vineyard.

The line from the seminal shark flick "Jaws" quickly came to mind for the crew -- "We’re gonna need a bigger boat."

The monster of the sea was “20 feet” long, said captain Jeff Lynch of Chilmark. “To see something that big was crazy. It was as big as my boat.”


The shark had zeroed in on a dead minke whale that was tangled in lobster gear and died. The shark, he said, kept at the whale but never chomped down —possibly sensing it was long dead.

“I was very surprised to see it,” Lynch told the Herald.

“I’ve never seen anything that big,” said fishing buddy Will Farrissey. “The first thing that went through my head is ‘I don’t want to sink now.’

“We waited for it to eat the whale, but it kept circling, nudging and bumping the whale,” Farrissey told the Herald today. “The girth on it was impressive.”

The crew left Menemsha Harbor at 6 a.m. in a 23-foot boat Sea Ox and headed out to sea about a mile off Gay Head. The shark, Lynch and Farrissey said, passed by dwarfing the center console skiff.

That’s when the 28-year-old Lynch started snapping photos with his cell phone after the Coast Guard asked him to record the amazing encounter. Lunch forwarded those images to state shark experts and the Herald.

State environmental officials said they confirm this is the first sighting of a great white this season. Reginald Zimmerman, of the state Energy and Environmental Affairs office, said the shark was pegged at more than 17 feet. “It could have been 20 feet,” he added. The shark left the area by about 11:30 a.m.

The whale was then towed to the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute in nearby Woods Hole where biologist will examine the minke and perform a necropsy, or post-mortem examination.