(Newser) – It might be a while before Walter Szulc Jr. decides it's safe to go back in the water. He was kayaking—for the first time—at a Cape Cod beach on the weekend when he saw the fin of a great white shark longer than his kayak just 10 feet behind him ... and started paddling furiously to get to shore, the New York Daily News. Beachgoers had spotted the 12- to 14-foot shark long before Szulc did, but he couldn't hear their warnings at first.

"There were hundreds of people on the beach, and they were all at the edge, yelling paddle paddle, paddle!" one beachgoer says. Szulc says that before going in the water, he had assured his daughter that the odds of a shark encounter were very low. "I found the odds, and they're not exactly as good as I thought," he says. Some Cape Cod beaches banned swimming last week after sightings of at least two great white sharks, who have been attracted to the area by large numbers of grey seals. (Read more Cape Cod stories.)

