New Jersey man films a shark swimming down his flooded street before it disappears into someone’s driveway
A shark takes the neighborhood route.
A New Jersey man probably wasn’t expecting to see a shark cruising through his neighborhood when he looked outside during a powerful nor’easter. Yet that’s exactly what Drew Procaccino captured on camera in Surf City, where floodwaters had turned a residential road into an unlikely swimming route.
According to UPI, Procaccino filmed the shark moving through the flooded neighborhood on Long Beach Island. Its dorsal fin could be seen poking above the water as it made its way down the street.
Speaking to The Philadelphia Inquirer, Procaccino said he filmed the shark around noon on Saturday as it swam by his home. The storm knocked out his internet service for roughly 48 hours. So he and his wife had been watching debris float past their house when she noticed something that looked like a fish. A closer look revealed a different kind of aquatic creature.
The unexpected visitor even appeared to make a detour. Procaccino said the shark disappeared into someone’s driveway while he was recording, before it was later spotted swimming toward Barnegat Bay.
A shark expert identifies the unexpected visitor
Greg Skomal, a shark expert with the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries, reportedly reviewed the footage and identified the animal as a smooth dogfish shark. The species is commonly found in coastal waters, including those along New Jersey.
According to the Florida Museum of Natural History, smooth dogfish typically inhabit shallow bays and continental shelves. They can grow up to five feet long and have flattened teeth suited to crushing shellfish.
That makes this shark relatively different from the great whites that tend to dominate frightening headlines. In September, a great white shark fatally attacked a swimmer in Australia, prompting authorities to issue a rare order to capture and kill the animal. Smooth dogfish, by comparison, are considered harmless to humans. Their usual meals include crustaceans, mollusks, and small fish, rather than people.
How did a shark end up swimming down a street?
The unusual sighting came as a powerful nor’easter flooded parts of the East Coast. In Surf City, rising water reached residential streets, creating conditions that allowed a coastal shark to venture somewhere people normally expect to see cars instead of dorsal fins.
The footage illustrates just how dramatically flooding can change a familiar location. Water entering a neighborhood doesn’t necessarily remain separate from the wildlife living in nearby coastal habitats. It’s certainly a different kind of flooding surprise from the Airbnb host who discovered water pouring into a guest room, yet both events initially posed a mystery.
The shark’s reported movement toward Barnegat Bay also fits with the species’ coastal habitat. However, UPI did not establish exactly where the animal went after that sighting.
For residents dealing with the aftermath of the storm, the flooding itself was a serious concern. Procaccino’s footage captured one particularly strange consequence: a neighborhood road briefly became a passageway for a shark.
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