Great White Shark Feeds on Dead Seal While Family Films it From Their Boat

A Rhode Island family got an eyeful during a boating expedition on Wednesday when they spotted a great white shark snacking on a seal carcass.

Peter Mottur of Portsmouth, R.I. was with his wife, two children and mother on their boat off the south tip of Monomoy Island near Chatham, Mass. when they found themselves privy to the great white's mealtime, according to the Huffington Post.

Mottur said they first saw the shark just a few hundred feet from the beach and maneuvered the boat for a closer look. That's when they saw the shark was occupied: swimming around a dead seal floating in the bay...then moving in to devour it. The family whipped out their cameras and captured the great white in action. Scroll for video.

"My kids were excited and terrified at the same time," Mottur told the Huffington Post. "They have watched Jaws with me several times, but they knew this was the real deal."

Mottur estimated the shark was easily 15 feet long and observed some sort of tag on it. In the video, a child's voice calls out warningly as the shark's full size reveals itself: "Dad, dad, dad!"

"He's fine," Mottur responds.

"It's massive! Dad he's under the boat!"

"It's fine," Mottur reassures again.

The seal's carcass was not so lucky: the surrounding water quickly ran red as the shark thrashed and ate it over a 10-minute span.

Mottur told the Huffington Post that after the encounter he contacted Dr. Greg Skomal, a shark biologist and head of the Massachusetts Shark Research Program. Skomal said the tag Mottur spotted was likely an acoustic tag to transmit data about the shark's movements.

"Skomal was very excited about the images and footage and this is apparently very rare to capture in this area," Mottur said.

Video below -- content warning -- images may be disturbing for some:

(h/t Huffington Post)