{"id":20090,"date":"2025-06-27T21:30:09","date_gmt":"2025-06-27T21:30:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/20090\/"},"modified":"2025-06-27T21:30:09","modified_gmt":"2025-06-27T21:30:09","slug":"n-j-photographer-shares-his-jersey-shore-jaws-moment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/20090\/","title":{"rendered":"N.J. photographer shares his Jersey Shore \u2018Jaws\u2019 moment"},"content":{"rendered":"

A South Jersey photographer said he spotted a dead shark on the beach near Ventnor City\u2019s fishing pier on Thursday morning, prompting curiosity about the animal on social media.<\/a><\/p>\n

Kristian Gonyea photographed the shark as part of a collection of photos he took capturing sunrise at the Jersey Shore city.<\/p>\n

Gonyea said he couldn\u2019t immediately determine what species of shark he found, but he estimated it to be between 4 and 5 feet long. He photographed it around 5:30 a.m., halfway between low and high tide. <\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve seen a few smaller sharks, of course, over the years, but that was probably one of the bigger ones I\u2019ve seen,\u201d Gonyea said. \u201cI go out every morning and shoot the sunrise, so I\u2019m always somewhere on the beach in the mornings, and then I just saw it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ventnor City Police<\/a> Chief Joseph T. Wootton said authorities had not received reports about the shark and couldn\u2019t locate it on the beach. Beach patrol units went looking for it after NJ Advance Media asked if others had reported the shark.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis was not reported to either the police department or the beach patrol,\u201d Wootton wrote in an email to NJ Advance Media. \u201cI also had patrol go down and check the area to see if anything was located (and) the area was clear.\u201d<\/p>\n

Marine Mammal Stranding Center Director Sheila Dean said the nonprofit had not been contacted about the shark. They do not typically respond to calls about non-marine mammals washing up on the beach, Dean said. <\/p>\n

Since it was found close to the pier, Dean suggested the shark may have washed up after being caught earlier by a fisherman who let it go.<\/p>\n

Last year, marine experts suggested shark sightings may be increasing in New Jersey<\/a> because the animals are pursuing heavy loads of baitfish near the shoreline.<\/p>\n

Thank you for relying on us to provide the local news you can trust. Please consider supporting NJ.com<\/a> with a subscription.<\/p>\n

Eric Conklin<\/a> may be reached at econklin@njadvancemedia.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A South Jersey photographer said he spotted a dead shark on the beach near Ventnor City\u2019s fishing pier…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":20091,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[159,67,132,68,837],"class_list":{"0":"post-20090","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-science","9":"tag-united-states","10":"tag-unitedstates","11":"tag-us","12":"tag-wildlife"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114757463473318960","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20090","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=20090"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20090\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20091"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20090"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20090"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20090"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}