A pinniped narrowly escaped the jaws of a great white shark swimming off the Nauset Inlet Wednesday — and researchers captured the chase on camera.

Wayne Davis, a spotter pilot who helps the Atlantic White Shark Conservancy search for sharks during their ocean expeditions with state biologists, had a bird’s-eye-view of the predator’s attempt at devouring its prey.

The conservancy posted a series of images of the event to Facebook this week. In the photos, the shark can be seen trailing closely behind the seal as it makes its way toward the beachy shoreline.


“The seal got away!,” the conservancy wrote.

In a comment on the Facebook post, Davis explained that the slippery seal only managed to live to see another day because the water in that area became too shallow for the large shark to navigate.

“It made an abrupt U-turn, and swam offshore. The seal was within inches of being brunch,” Davis said.

The images were taken the same day that the conservancy, along with state shark biologist Gregory Skomal, tagged two great whites.

The first shark, which experts said was around 14 feet long, appeared around 10 a.m. just a few hundred feet from Coast Guard Beach in Eastham. It was later tagged with a tracking device a half-mile from shore.

The second shark was tagged at 2:21 p.m., about a half-mile off South Beach near the Chatham Southway, researchers said.

It’s not the first time shark experts have witnessed a seal outsmart a great white in Cape Cod waters.

Last summer, the conservancy posted a video that showed a seal leaping from the emerald-green water and into the air, inches from the shark’s sharp-toothed mouth.

Steve Annear can be reached at steve.annear@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @steveannear.