Martha Vineyard’s Great White: 1 Real, 1 Hoax

A Boston man faced charges of reckless endangerment for allegedly making up a story about a shark sighting off Martha’s Vineyard on Thursday, July 10, 2008, police said.

Michael Lopenzo, 60, is charged with telling people that he saw two 22-foot long sharks that weighed about 3,000 pounds each near State Beach, Edgartown Police Chief Paul Condlin said.

Lopenzo gave his address as 17 Court St., in Boston, which is the address of the New England Shelter for Homeless Veterans.

But there were two sightings at two different beaches Thursday. One at State Beach where parts of “Jaws” was filmed, and one at South Beach. Edgartown police say the sighting at State beach was the hoax, but the threat at South Beach was the real deal.

Lifeguards spotted the shark while they were doing drills in the water, and phoned in a biplane to get a better look. The pilot says that he did in fact spot the shark, a great white shark about 22 feet long!

Loren Coleman About Loren Coleman
Loren Coleman is one of the world’s leading cryptozoologists, some say “the” leading living cryptozoologist. Certainly, he is acknowledged as the current living American researcher and writer who has most popularized cryptozoology in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Starting his fieldwork and investigations in 1960, after traveling and trekking extensively in pursuit of cryptozoological mysteries, Coleman began writing to share his experiences in 1969. An honorary member of Ivan T. Sanderson’s Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained in the 1970s, Coleman has been bestowed with similar honorary memberships of the North Idaho College Cryptozoology Club in 1983, and in subsequent years, that of the British Columbia Scientific Cryptozoology Club, CryptoSafari International, and other international organizations. He was also a Life Member and Benefactor of the International Society of Cryptozoology (now-defunct). Loren Coleman’s daily blog, as a member of the Cryptomundo Team, served as an ongoing avenue of communication for the ever-growing body of cryptozoo news from 2005 through 2013. He returned as an infrequent contributor beginning Halloween week of 2015. Coleman is the founder in 2003, and current director of the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine.

Email • Facebook • Twitter •