'Look at that monster': Fishermen spot HUGE 12-foot-long great white shark off Jersey Shore
On Saturday, June 4, Jim Piazza and a group of other men were fishing off the coast of Jersey Shore when they noticed a great white shark swimming inches away from their boat. Piazza told NJ.com that he was fishing with his son and some friends less than a mile off the coast of Sea Isle when he nearly ran it over.
"The videos don't do it justice. It was just nonchalantly there," he told the website. "Great white shark right off the coast of Sea Isle. Look at that monster!" Piazza said while recording the 10 to 13-foot-long shark near his 23-foot-long boat. At around 12:15 pm, the fishing group was less than a mile from the shore when one of them called out, "Shark, watch out!"
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Piazza told Philly Voice, "We were on our way back in, and oddly enough, my son spotted the shark. We almost ran it over. We turned back around and just circled it for the next 10 minutes. It was definitely more than half the size of the boat, up next to it in person. It doesn't really look like it in the video, but that didn't do it justice. The size of that shark was nuts." The US Coast Guard boarded the boat for a safety check and later posted the video on their Facebook page.
"Today a 12-foot Great White shark was spotted less than a mile off of Townsends Inlet. Thanks to Savvas B for sending us the video!" they captioned the video. Piazza commented on the post with a photo, "I took the video shark was at least 10'-13' my boat is a 23' crazy one mile off coast." He told NJ.com that he fishes nearly every day and that the great white shark's visit to his boat has made it a memorable summer for him. "I've never seen anything like that," said Piazza.
"It was pretty docile. It was swimming north toward Ocean City area, but it was really just mellow and swimming along its little path. When we pulled up to it, it kind of did a couple of little loops, but it was still curious, so it was kind of swimming up to us still. Thank God it didn't bite the boat, obviously, or try to bite at anything," he told Philly Voice.
"I didn't see any tags on it. It was pretty crazy to even be a great white. I've seen blacktip sharks out there before, smaller blacktips, but nothing on the scale of this. It's a little scary, since I've fallen off a couple times right there, ha!" joked Piazza.
Great white sharks annually migrate north during the summer to feed near Nova Scotia to bulk up again after mating season in the southern Atlantic. It's not uncommon for them to swim off the coast of New Jersey, and shark populations have been recovering on the East Coast after four decades of decline, mostly caused by overfishing, as per Philly Voice.