Maine restricts swimming after woman killed by shark

While beach attendance may be lower than usual this summer, concern about sharks is high.

Maine has temporarily restricted swimming on its shores and in 10 state parks to waist-high water only after a woman was killed by a great white shark there earlier this week.

Sharks typically avoid shallow water.

Officials said 63-year-old Julie Dimperio Holowach likely died instantaneously when bitten by a shark near the town of Harpswell. She was swimming with her daughter at the time and brought to shore by kayakers and pronounced dead at the scene.

A tooth fragment from the shark was used to identify it as a great white.

While fatal shark encounters are still rare – Maine officials said it was just their second in ten years – scientists in California are developing new technologies to study our most feared underwater inhabitant.

"Despite the fact that shark populations are going up, we're not really seeing more people actually being bitten by sharks. In fact, in some years the rate has gone down. So, what that tells us, as a scientist, is that we're not on their menu at all. But occasionally accidents happen."

Chris Lowe is director of the Shark Lab at California State University at Long Beach, which is in the middle of a two-year study that uses drones and other technology - such as underwater robots and ultrasonic transmitters - to tag and monitor sharks off the coast of southern California.

"The goal is to better understand shark biology and behavior, and to not just give that information to lifeguards who have to make public safety decisions, but to the public who have to decide where that risk is and when is it most appropriate to exercise caution versus when they don't need to."

The great white shark – seared into the American psyche as the terrorizing star of 1975’s blockbuster film “Jaws” and its sequels - prefers cool coastal waters and can reach 20 feet in length, weigh 7,000 pounds and dive to nearly 4,000 feet.