NIANTIC, Conn. (WFSB) – A fisherman spotted what appears to be a hammerhead shark in Long Island Sound near Niantic on Monday.<\/p>\n
Josh Enman has fished Long Island Sound his whole life. Monday\u2019s sighting was a first for him.<\/p>\n
\u201cI looked right out the side of the boat, and I\u2019m looking at Rocky Neck Beach. Right in front of my boat are the red and green cans from Hatchett Reef,\u201d Enman said.<\/p>\n
Debbie Sayer, a marine science educator at Project Oceanology, said hammerhead sharks are uncommon in the area.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re pretty uncommon,\u201d Sayer said.<\/p>\n
Sayer said the shark was likely following food.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re pretty cosmopolitan. Temperate waters. I think the smooth ones prefer shallower water but we haven\u2019t seen them at the surface where people are viewing them very often,\u201d Sayer said.<\/p>\n
Sayer said this was likely a smooth hammerhead shark, which occasionally makes its way to the area.<\/p>\n
Brown sharks have also been seen throughout the sound this year, also chasing food. Like the hammerheads, they are not after humans.<\/p>\n
Enman described an encounter with a shark near his boat.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt swarm around to the front of my boat. It kind of tail slapped the boat, then dove straight down fast,\u201d Enman said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019d never seen a shark that size out there. Everyone has seen dogfish and sand sharks and stuff like that but I\u2019ve never seen anything of that size out there,\u201d Enman said.<\/p>\n
Dolphins are being spotted more often in the sound as well. Sayer said changes in food patterns could explain the increased sightings.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe might be seeing things like a change in the food. We had a pretty cold winter with a slow warm up so it\u2019s possible they are chasing food in at a different time of year than we expect,\u201d Sayer said.<\/p>\n
Copyright 2026 WFSB. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NIANTIC, Conn. (WFSB) – A fisherman spotted what appears to be a hammerhead shark in Long Island Sound…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1038112,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[27],"tags":[44499,213265,414880,107363,10704,415314,51406,415315,415313,159,11539,67,132,68,837],"class_list":["post-1038111","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-fisherman","tag-hammerhead","tag-hatchett-reef","tag-long-island-sound","tag-marine-science","tag-marine-science-educator","tag-niantic","tag-project-oceanology","tag-rocky-neck-beach","tag-science","tag-shark","tag-united-states","tag-unitedstates","tag-us","tag-wildlife"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/117199424871055094","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1038111","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1038111"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1038111\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1038112"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1038111"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1038111"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1038111"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}