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Great White Shark Washes Ashore In New York; Others Sighted

By Dustin Wicksell
Published on: 02:28 PST, Aug 3, 2014

A shark found Tuesday evening on the beach at Amagansett in Long Island has been confirmed as a great white, according to scientists from Stony Brook University, though other sightings confirm that it is hardly the only one to be found in New York waters.

The shark was found stranded on the beach earlier this week, but at only 4 feet in length, was hardly an adult specimen. According to CBS New York, the young shark was dissected Thursday under the direction of the U.S. National Marine Fisheries Service, providing a wealth of information for scientists.

The great white was reportedly less than 2 years old, according to Marine scientist Demian Chapman, who assisted with the dissection. The shark weighed only 75 pounds, according to 27east, but fully grown adults of the species can reach 21 feet in length and an astonishing 2 tons in weight. No cause of death was determined.

East Hampton Chief Harbor Master Ed Michaels and harbor masters Joe Vish and Jay Carron discovered the stranded juvenile shark around dusk on Tuesday. A crowd of beachgoers surrounded the deceased great white, which is illegal to posses in New York State, according to the Department of Environmental Conservation. Concerned about the crowd gathering around the shark, they confiscated the great white, turning it over to Stony Brook.

The juvenile shark isn’t the only great white to be found in the waters surrounding Long Island this time of the year. As NBC New York reports, a large shark, believed to be a great white, recently swam up to a fishing boat about 15 miles off of Fire Island. The sighting was the third in a week, after another shark was spotted off of Cape May, and a pair of sharks were seen a mile from Rockaway Beach. Greg Grodecki, who was in the boat, said that “It was just amazing to see it, so beautiful and powerful.”

The sharks generally feed on seals and sea lions, which populate the east end of Long Island. As The Inquisitr has previously reported, growing seal colonies on the Eastern Seaboard of the U.S., particularly around Cape Cod, are viewed as essential to a great white shark population that is surging thanks to conservation efforts over the last two decades.

[Image via Dan Callister]

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