State biologist says large, great white shark probably killed seal

A half-eaten seal that washed up in Ocean Shores last week was probably killed by a great white shark that could have been as long as 18 feet, state Department of Fish and Wildlife biologists said Wednesday.

A resident reported the female harbor seal last Thursday, and a biologist collected the body the next day, according to a report from the department. A necropsy determined the 200-pound seal had been attacked by a shark close to shore.

Dayv Lowry, a senior research biologist with the department, used a method he helped develop as a graduate student in Florida to identify the type and size of shark by analyzing the space between bite marks on the seal. Though the bite could have been from a seven-gill shark, salmon shark or orca, Lowry said a great white is most likely.

Lowry added that shark behavior — including their proximity to the shoreline — is hard to predict, and depends on a variety of factors, including depth and clarity of the water and where sharks can find food.

“If the sharks are in the area and they’re hunting seals and the seals are hanging out in the near shores in very shallow water, that’s where the sharks will hunt,” he said. “So having sharks come near shore while they’re hunting seals and sea lions and other things is not at all uncommon.”

The shark-attack risk for surfers and other water-goers in coastal towns like Ocean Shores and Westport, Lowry said, is also hard to calculate.

“At that point it’s essentially just a statistics game,” he said. “If there’re 10,000 people who surf a beach over the course of a summer in California, they may see 10 white sharks. If you’ve got 100 up here in Washington, they may see one.”

He added that the department has heard many anecdotes from Washington residents about encounters with sharks. Since the mid-19th century, the report says, the state has only documented two shark attacks on humans. Neither was fatal.

At 18 feet, the shark involved in the seal attack is quite large, said Craig Bartlett, a department spokesman. He added the largest sharks are typically around 21 feet long.

Most sharks, Bartlett added, appear 40 or 50 miles off the coast, hunting schools of tuna. Regardless of typical shark activity, he said, there’s always risk when sharing the waters with wildlife.

“We don’t actually have the authority to say, ‘OK, everybody out of the water,’” he said. “But I know that, personally, I wouldn’t want to be surfing out there right now.”

A second seal that washed up last Saturday had apparently been caught in a fishing net, Bartlett said.