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The first shark spotting occurred this past weekend, right in our own backyard!
The Jersey Shore has seen sharks come and go the last few summers. This summer, the first great white shark was spotted. Jim Piazza saw the shark while fishing off of Sea Isle City in New Jersey, as reported by ABC 7.
“I almost ran it over. My son was like pointing to it like, ‘Hey, there goes a shark.’ And I’m like, ‘No way!’ So I made a loop around and yeah we circled it for about 10 minutes. It was just kind of swimming north towards Ocean City,” Jim told Action News.
They are estimating that this was a 'teenage shark' as done by Steve Nagiewicz, Marine Science teacher and shark conservationist. The shark was approximately 8 feet long.
According to the National Ocean Service, “Only about a dozen of the more than 300 species of sharks have been involved in attacks on humans” and “sharks have more to fear from humans than we do of them.” So maybe we don't have as much to fear as we thought.... You can also track sharks yourself. The tracker is called “OCEARCH” and it shows where sharks last surfaced, their weight and height according to Secret NYC.