HARPSWELL, Maine — Authorities in Maine are stepping up vigilance and warning swimmers and paddlers to be careful after a great white shark attack on Monday killed a 63-year-old woman from New York City.
Julie Dimperio Holowach was killed in the attack off Bailey Island in the Casco Bay town of Harpswell. Officials said it was the first fatal shark attack ever in Maine.
Patrick Keliher, commissioner of the Maine Department of Marine Resources, said Massachusetts’ top expert on great white sharks had confirmed that it was a great white shark with the help of a fragment of a tooth the shark left behind.
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He said Greg Skomal was checking data on great white sharks tagged off Massachusetts “to see if any of those sharks may have moved north in recent days.”
“I want to stress that this is a highly unusual event,” he said. But he also said, “We encourage everybody to be vigilant.”
Meanwhile, an eyewitness gave a harrowing account of the attack.
Tom Whyte said he was working from his second-story office overlooking the island’s Mackerel Cove when he saw two people head out for an afternoon swim on an unusually hot Monday afternoon.
He watched as the duo laughed and paddled northward about 20 yards from shore, one in a black wetsuit, the other in a blue one-piece swimsuit. Then the person wearing the wetsuit dipped under the water, arms flailing.
The other looked back, viewed her companion emerge from under the water and swam rapidly back to shore, where she climbed to land and screamed for help. Neighbors ran to her aid. She was uninjured.
A million scenarios shot through Whyte’s mind, he said. But never the one that authorities later reported: a shark had apparently fatally attacked the woman in the wetsuit, who was later identified as Dimperio Holowach, in what would be the state’s first recorded shark attack in a decade.
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After the other woman arrived on shore, she dropped to her hands and knees and screamed for help. Neighbors ran to her aid. She was uninjured.
The US Coast Guard launched a small response boat from Portland after receiving word of the attack at 3:37 p.m, but turned around after learning that the injured woman had been brought to land.
A kayak approached the floating woman, but was clearly distraught and unable to help, said Whyte, and the woman floated to shore. She was pronounced dead by paramedics that arrived on the scene.
The tragedy has shaken the idyllic island on the outskirts of Brunswick, where nearly all roads lead to dead ends, lobster traps crowd the cold, blue waters and American flags billow in coastal winds.
“It is all very surreal,” said Whyte, shaking his head.
Neighbors described Dimperio Holowach as a seasonal resident of the sleepy island that has a year-round population of less than 400. She could be spotted almost every morning this time of year walking or jogging the main road of the island. She resided in a home on Elden Point Road and used a neighbor’s floating dock in Mackerel Cove to access the water, said Marie Schmon, another island resident.
Schmon described Dimperio Holowach as a “welcoming, warm, civic-minded” woman who “always a smile on her face” and “took exercise more seriously than the rest of us.” The attack Monday reportedly occurred in the waters just outside Schmon’s home on White Sails Lane.
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Suspicions in the attack immediately turned to the great white shark, a fearsome apex predator whose population has been on the rise off the Massachusetts coast.
Officials from the Atlantic White Shark Conservancy — a nonprofit that works with the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries to study, track, and tag great whites off the state’s coastline — expressed sympathy in a Facebook post Tuesday for Holowach’s family.
”First and foremost, our sincerest condolences to the loved ones of the woman who lost her life off Harpswell,” the group said.
According to the conservancy, although great white shark sightings are “relatively rare” in the region where the woman was killed, they’re not unheard-of.
”White sharks have long been known to be seasonal inhabitants of the Gulf of Maine, and they have been observed preying on seals and porpoises in Maine’s coastal waters,” the conservancy said. “Sightings data, catch records, and tagging data indicate white sharks occur in the region from the early summer through the fall.”
The group said they will continue to collaborate with several agencies to “expand our knowledge of white sharks in these areas and, through outreach, help promote public safety.”
Nick Whitney, a senior scientist at the New England Aquarium, said it’s not uncommon for great white sharks to swim off the coast of Maine, but it is rare for them to attack people.
“They go off the coast of Maine all the way up to Nova Scotia. Their range is broader than we thought,” he said.
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An individual shark can migrate all the way from Nova Scotia to Florida, and then go around the Keys into the Gulf of Mexico over the course of a year, he said.
Two shark attacks, one of them fatal, happened in the waters off of Cape Cod in 2018, Whitney noted. That August, a 61-year-old New York man was bitten by a shark in Truro and survived. Then in September, a 26-year-old Revere man died after a shark bit him while he boogie-boarded in the waters off Wellfleet.
“Last year we had none, and hopefully this year we’ll have none,” he said.
Whitney said he did not know the details of Monday’s incident, but from the news reports he’s seen thus far it sounded like it was a large shark that “produced a fatal bite,” which means a great white shark was the likely culprit, unless there is evidence suggesting otherwise.
“It’s possible the shark mistook the swimmer for a seal….or it was investigating,” he said. “Occasionally they will investigate with their mouths. Even a small investigatory bite from a white shark can be fatal. But I have no idea if this was the case [in Monday’s incident].”
Whitney said while there may be less media coverage of shark sightings this summer, that does not mean there are fewer sharks in the water. “They are definitely around this year – I’m not aware of any difference in shark activity,” he said. We probably haven’t seen as many stories about them because with the pandemic, there’s been so many other stories to cover.”
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Back in Harpswell, residents and visitors stopped periodically during their morning walks along the island’s sandy roads Tuesday morning to discuss the horrors of the day before.
The Barnes family from Orchard Park, New York, walked Harpswell Island Road, which runs through Bailey Island, around 8 a.m. and marveled at the spookiness of how they were swimming when they heard and dismissed ambulances roaring southward yesterday afternoon.
Whyte said he swam in the bay for the first time in two years this past weekend.
“This just doesn’t happen,” said Dave Barnes, who stays at his mother’s home on the island every summer with his family.
The Mackerel Cove Beach was empty save for a few visitors from Brunswick, who had yet to hear about the shark attack and both immediately referenced the movie “Jaws” when they realized what had occurred.
The lobstermen nearby at Glen’s Lobster, who were busy hauling in the morning’s bounty, expressed equal surprise about the incident, noting how they rarely, if ever, see sharks while out on their morning cruise.
A couple from New York, who heard the sirens Monday, shook their heads as they admitted that the horrors of this particularly strange year had followed them to vacation.
Hanna can be reached at hanna.krueger@globe.com. Follow her on twitter @hannaskrueger. Steve Annear can be reached at steve.annear@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @steveannear. Emily Sweeney can be reached at emily.sweeney@globe.com. Follow her on Twitter @emilysweeney.
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