Careful! These sharks have been spotted at the Jersey Shore
Lifeguards got everyone out of the water in Deal on Thursday after two sharks were spotted in the water.
Deal Police said the two sharks approximately 100-150 yards off the offshore near the Deal Casino chasing a pod of dolphins around 11:30 a.m. As a precaution, lifeguards ordered everyone out of the water and notified surrounding towns of the sharks, which were six to seven feet in length and headed north towards Long Branch.
"While we are well aware sharks live in the ocean. We want to ensure that everyone is informed that a shark was sighted in close proximity to our service area," wrote Deal Police in a statement.
"It is a common behavior for sharks to follow dolphins. Essentially dolphins are good at finding fish schools and the sharks follow to help them find food," Paul Bologna, director of the Marine Biology and Coastal Sciences Program at Montclair, said of the siting.
It's not the first sighting in recent days. A boatload of recreational fishermen came face-to-face with a juvenile Great White shark Sunday, CBS reported.
Sharks are attracted to the Jersey Shore because the water is warmer according to Marie Levine, executive director on the Shark Research Institute of Princeton, but doesn't consider them a threat.
"The most dangerous thing people have to worry about at the Jersey Shore is the sun." Levine said. She said during her 40 years of diving along the shore she's never been threatened by a shark.
"We're just not on their menu," Levine said.
But Shark attacks aren't entirely unprecedented. Friday marks the 100-year anniversary of a series of deadly attacks along the Jersey Shore that are believed to have helped inspire the movie "Jaws."
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