One day in mid-August, Scarborough Beach State Park manager Greg Wilfret was swimming his regular circuit when something grabbed the yellow lifeguard buoy trailing in his wake and pulled him under the water.
"I'm probably 10 yards out further than I should be, and I'm swimming and then all of a sudden, I just get yanked backwards. And the first thing I thought was a prop," recalled Wilfert, at the beach less than a week later.
He quickly realized it wasn't a boat propeller. It was a shark. He slipped free of the strap connecting the tube to his body and raced for shore.
"So when I got into shallow water, I immediately yelled, 'Get out of the water!' to everybody, and then I yelled to the lifeguards. They immediately hit the horn and then put up the red flag," Wilfret said.
Wilfret has been a summer lifeguard at Scarborough Beach since 1972, and that was the first interaction he'd ever had with a shark. It left an impression.
"Well, it changes my relationship with swimming the buoys, that's never going to happen again," he said.
August is peak beach season in southern Maine. Residents and visitors alike flock to the shore to soak up abundant sun and warm ocean water.
But in recent years beachgoers and park managers alike are getting accustomed to sharing their space with a seemingly growing number of white sharks, also known as great white sharks.
Near-shore sightings this summer have temporarily closed beaches from Georgetown in the midcoast all the way down to Wells in York County. And beach managers are increasing surveillance and precautions in response.
Since Wilfret's experience, a lifeguard patrols Scarborough Beach waters with a Jet Ski from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. daily. Staff fly a drone and scan with binoculars to pick out sharks. On a recent afternoon, visitors were only allowed in the water up to their waists.
It seems new and unnerving, but Wilfret said the precautions help people feel secure.
"This is the new norm, but we're going to play it safe and keep people safe." Wilfret said. "I guess this is it for the rest of the summer."
News of an uptick in shark sightings has left some beachgoers, such as Emily Stiffler of South Portland, a little wary.
"I'm not going in the water today," Stiffler said during a bright, sunny day in Scarborough. "Maybe my toes, but I'm just here to sit on the beach."
Stiffler's friend Carissa Farwell, however, said knowing sharks were around made her more intrigued than afraid.
"I feel like this is their domain and we are lucky to be a part of it and lucky to see them and experience them and we shouldn't be scared of them," Farwell said.
Down the beach, Charlie Sullivan, of Scarborough, said he'd been coming here for 30 years. Occasionally someone would see a shark far away from the beach, near rocks where seals hang out, Sullivan said. But he's never heard of them this close to shore, or seen the reaction from beach management.
"The Jet Ski, the ATVs, lifeguards all along the beach, never seen anything like that," Sullivan said. He felt comfortable going in the water out to his waist but "cautious, very, very cautious," Sullivan added.
White sharks have swum through Maine waters forever, but until recent years, near-shore sightings were rare.
Matt Davis, a marine biologist at the Maine Department of Marine Resources, said the Atlantic white shark population is finally rebounding after a federal ban on hunting in the late 1990s.
"With white sharks you're looking at a species with a really slow reproductive time. It takes white sharks 30-35 years before they can even reproduce," Davis said.
Many of the near-shore sharks spotted recently have been 6- to 8-foot long juveniles, rather than adults that can reach 16 feet long, Davis added. Atlantic white sharks migrate north from the south during warmer months.
According to data from acoustic monitors spread out along the Maine coast since 2020, a good number of the tagged sharks tracked in the state came through Saco Bay, including four that pinged off monitors 125 times near Scarborough Beach in 2025.
Two of those sharks were juveniles that spent most of last August in the area, Davis added. The young sharks could be attracted to rich fishing in the bay, including stripped bass, bluefish and menhaden, Davis said.
Researchers from DMR and University of Massachusetts Dartmouth are now trying to fit more young sharks with tags that will help them track their movements, Davis added.
"Maybe we are realizing that Maine's southern coast is important habitat for juvenile white sharks. But we really don't know for certain and we're not going to really be able to give a direct answer until we can get some tags on these animals," he said.
But it could also be that sharks were easier to spot this year, thanks to a long run of bright, clear, calm weather and the growing use of airborne drones.
"It could be the case that they've been using this habitat for a while and we just haven't had people that are out there with drones seeing it," Davis said.
Either way, beach managers are being more cautious. The town of Harpswell, where a swimmer was killed by a white shark in 2020, is flying shark warning flags at its public swimming areas all summer long.
State parks are turning to shark protocols developed four years ago and contemplating added surveillance by Jet Skis and drones, said Gary Best, southern regional park manager for the Maine Bureau of Parks and Lands. His territory includes popular beach destinations such as Popham Beach, Reid, and Crescent Beach state parks.
A big part of the parks' push will be education, to help visitors better understand, appreciate and respect the fascinating animals, Best added.
"It seems like shark populations are continuing to grow and their travel patterns are bringing them to the coast of Maine more than I certainly recall," Best said.
"I've lived in Maine my whole life and as a kid I didn't really think about it," Best said. "But now we need to."
Shark attacks on humans are incredibly rare, but Best cautions against swimming at dawn or dusk and recommends staying close to shore, in groups, and away from low visibility water, schools of fish, and seals.
