Fins of ‘very large’ shark spotted by woman dining near RI pond. See it swim

A woman dining near Rhode Island’s Great Salt Pond spotted the fins of a “very large” shark in the water and started filming, capturing the marine creature swimming by boaters, her video shared by a nonprofit organization shows.

The footage was taken by Jen Seebeck while she was having dinner at Dead Eye Dicks, a seafood restaurant on Block Island, on May 26, according to a May 27 Instagram post from the Atlantic Shark Institute.

“We got a number of calls yesterday as people on Block Island, RI were treated to quite the scene, kicking off the 2025 summer season,” the research institute said of the shark in the Great Salt Pond.

Seebeck “noticed the fin slicing through the water inside Great Salt Pond,” the organization wrote, adding that the sighting was “reminiscent of a scene from Jaws on this 50th anniversary of the film.”

Block Island’s Great Salt Pond leads into another pond and is connected to the ocean, according to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

The shark seen in the pond is a basking shark, the Atlantic Shark Institute’s executive director, Jon Dodd, told WBZ-TV. He estimated the fish to be 20 feet in length.

“They are harmless filter-feeders but that wouldn’t matter much if you were in the water when one came cruising by!” Dodd said of basking sharks during an interview with the TV station.

As the second largest species of fish, basking sharks habitually swim near the surface of the water with their mouths open, feeding on plankton, according to Oceana, an international ocean advocacy group. The largest fish is the whale shark.

According to the Atlantic Shark Institute, more sharks have been appearing off the coast of Rhode Island due to rising water temperatures.

“Hopefully this shark will find its way out of Great Salt Pond soon and continue on its way,” the organization wrote in its post.

This story was originally published May 28, 2025 at 5:44 PM with the headline "Fins of ‘very large’ shark spotted by woman dining near RI pond. See it swim."

Julia Marnin

McClatchy DC

Julia Marnin covers courts for McClatchy News, writing about criminal and civil affairs, including cases involving policing, corrections, civil liberties, fraud, and abuses of power. As a reporter on McClatchy’s National Real-Time Team, she’s also covered the COVID-19 pandemic and a variety of other topics since joining in 2021, following a fellowship with Newsweek. Born in Biloxi, Mississippi, she was raised in South Jersey and is now based in New York State.