A Shark Was Spotted Swimming Through the Flooded Streets of New Jersey During the Nor’easter
The creature has been identified as a smooth dogfish, a harmless species found throughout the western Atlantic Ocean. It wasn’t the only animal caught in the chaos brought by the storm system
/https://tf-cmsv2-smithsonianmag-media.s3.amazonaws.com/accounts/headshot/SarahKuta.png)
/https://tf-cmsv2-smithsonianmag-media.s3.amazonaws.com/filer_public/05/78/05782a4b-de8f-4169-98a8-407daac09187/noreaster.jpg)
When floodwaters filled the streets of a coastal New Jersey community during the recent nor’easter, they brought with them an unexpected visitor: a shark.
The creature was spotted in Surf City, a borough located on Long Beach Island, an 18-mile-long barrier island on New Jersey’s coast. Resident Drew Procaccino caught the animal on video as it swam past his home around noon on September 26, heading up the driveway before making its way west toward Barnegat Bay.
“Is that a little shark?” a person can be heard saying in the background. “He’s coming this way.”
The creature is a smooth dogfish, “which is a very small, harmless shark that is common in those waters,” Greg Skomal, a marine biologist with the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries and head of the Massachusetts Shark Research Program, tells ABC News.
The smooth dogfish, also known as the dusky smoothhound, lives throughout the western Atlantic Ocean, swimming as far north as eastern Canada and as far south as Argentina. They’re typically about three feet long but can grow as large as five feet.
Smooth dogfish aren’t picky eaters, scavenging whatever food they can find, including crustaceans, squid and bony fish. Unlike many sharks, which have sharp, pointed teeth, smooth dogfish have flat, blunt teeth designed for crushing and grinding their prey, rather than tearing it. Females give birth to live young, usually bearing 4 to 20 pups after ten months of pregnancy. Females have life spans of up to 16 years, while males live up to around ten years.
The shark made its surprise appearance during the powerful nor’easter that battered part of the East Coast over the weekend. The slow-moving system brought heavy rain, high winds and coastal flooding to the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic, causing major travel disruptions and power outages. At least one person died during the storm, 56-year-old Leighton Brown, who was walking in Brooklyn when part of a tree fell and struck him. The storm toppled nearly 1,000 trees across New York City’s five boroughs.
Nor’easters—which get their name from the northeasterly coastal winds that accompany them—can occur at any time of year, but they’re most common between September and April. These low-pressure systems typically occur between Georgia and New Jersey, often forming within 100 miles east or west of the East Coast.
“It’s definitely going to be a case of the closer to the coast you are, the more impacts from the storm you’re likely to see,” Matthew Belk, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Norton, Massachusetts, tells the Associated Press’ Kimberlee Kruesi and Leah Willingham.
The shark wasn’t the only creature caught in the nor’easter’s chaos. In Middletown Township, New Jersey, firefighters rescued a doe that had tried to run through a metal fence and gotten stuck. A crew covered her head with a blanket, then used an electric saw to cut through the fence. The deer was freed in about 15 minutes and escaped without injuries.
“They’re our neighbors just as much as the next person,” Rob Allen, a spokesperson for the Middletown Township Fire Department, tells the Washington Post’s Kyle Melnick.
Did you know? 19th-century shipwreck
The nor’easter uncovered what may be the remains of a 19th-century shipwreck on Nantucket, Massachusetts.
And a dog named Daisy went viral after her owner, Robin Shaffer, shared a clip of her riding atop a kayak through the flooded streets of Ocean City, New Jersey. The kayak was Shaffer’s clever solution for helping Daisy relieve herself amid the flooding.
“There was so much water surrounding my house that I had to literally get the kayak out to bring the dog, a little Corgi mix, just to get her over to dry land where she could do what dogs do,” Shaffer tells WHYY’s Tom MacDonald.
/https://tf-cmsv2-smithsonianmag-media.s3.amazonaws.com/accounts/headshot/SarahKuta.png)