A New York woman was killed in a shark attack while swimming off the coast of a Maine island on Monday.
Maine officials said Tuesday …
A New York woman was killed in a shark attack while swimming off the coast of a Maine island on Monday. Maine officials said Tuesday that Julie Dimperio Holowach was about 20 yards off the shore of Bailey Island in Harpswell when she was attacked. It is the first recorded fatal shark attack in Maine — and the second recorded unprovoked attack by one of the ocean predators in a decade. It follows two years after Massachusetts saw a Revere man killed by a shark while boogie boarding at a Wellfleet beach and a New York man survived but suffered severe injuries in another attack by a great white at a Truro beach. “This is a highly unusual event,” Patrick Keliher, commissioner of the Maine Department of Marine Resources, said at a Tuesday press conference. “However, at this time, the department is urging swimmers and other people recreating in or around the waters of the Casco Bay region, and in particular near Bailey’s Island, to be aware of their surroundings and to avoid schools of fish, which will attract seals. The seals in return will attract sharks.” Below, what we know about the second fatal shark attack New England waters in two years. During the press conference on Tuesday, Maine officials said Dimperio Holowach, who was wearing a wetsuit, and her daughter were swimming approximately 20 yards from the shore of Bailey Island when the attack occurred around 3:26 p.m. on Monday. The woman’s daughter was able to make it back to shore, uninjured. Officials expressed gratitude for the quick actions of nearby kayakers, who helped bring Dimperio Holowach to the shore, where she was pronounced dead by local EMS. “In the face of that situation, the fact that they were able to kayak into that area and help bring the body back to shore was nothing more than miraculous, and we certainly sincerely thank them,” Keliher said. Tom Whyte was an eyewitness to the attack that claimed the life of the 63-year-old, according to The Boston Globe. He told the newspaper he was working in his second-story office overlooking the island’s Mackerel Cove when he saw the two swimmers head into the water. Whyte told the Portland Press Herald that the older woman was about 10 to 15 feet away from her daughter, who was not wearing a wetsuit. He heard the family members giggling and laughing but then heard Dimperio Holowach scream, he told the newspaper. “It looked like she was pulled under,” he said. “I saw her underwater and just her hands were above water.” Her companion swam back to shore and screamed for help, neighbors running to her side, he told the Globe. Whyte said he watched as a distraught kayaker approached the floating woman in the water, who was brought back to shore. “It is all very surreal,” he said. The shark was not observed in the area after the initial contact of the attack, according to officials.
