Police spot great white shark off North Shore beach

A confirmed great white shark was spotted off Crane Beach in Ipswich Tuesday afternoon, closing the beach to swimming.

The Ipswich Police Department posted two videos on social media of the shark swimming off the bow of their boat in about five to seven feet of water. 

Shark expert Gregory Skomal of the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries confirmed by email that the shark in the videos is a great white shark. 

Great white sharks can be seen off the entire coast of Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Maine, as well as throughout the entire Gulf of Maine, off Nova Scotia, Newfoundland, and into the Gulf of St. Lawrence, Skomal wrote. 

So, a shark off of Crane Beach “is to be expected,” he wrote. 

The Atlantic White Shark Conservancy app also confirmed Tuesday’s sighting at 11:56 a.m. It is the only sighting the app reported not off the Atlantic side of Cape Cod in the past two days. 

However, great white sharks have been reported off the beach in the past year, with two other sightings reported on the app on Sept. 12. 

The Trustees of Reservations, which operates the beach, announced on X that swimming at the beach is prohibited until further notice.