Great White Likely Attacked Seal Off Monmouth County Beach, Expert Says

SANDY HOOK GATEWAY NATIONAL RECREATION AREA, NJ — A badly-injured seal that limped ashore Thursday at Sandy Hook was very likely bitten by a great white shark, the marine mammal expert who rescued it told Patch.

"The bite marks are consistent with a small great white," said Bob Schoelkopf, the founder and director of the Marine Mammal Stranding Center, who drove up from Brigantine yesterday to pick up the seal. "Although we'll never know for sure, that looks like what it is."

Schoelkopf estimates it was a four-foot-long juvenile great white that took a bite out of this seal.

"They need to practice hunting. If it was a successful hunt, we wouldn't be seeing this seal right now," he said.

The young seal was first noticed by Sandy Hook Gateway park rangers Thursday morning in the water off one of their beaches. When it came ashore, they saw it was badly injured with multiple shark bites. The yearling female is resting now at the Marine Mammal Stranding Center after being treated for multiple wounds. She will likely be returned to the ocean in a few months.

Don't be too surprised to learn there are great whites right off the New Jersey coast:

"Great whites are born in the back bays of New Jersey, places like Barnegat Bay and Absecon Bay, and in back bays up and down the Atlantic," Schoelkopf said. "Their mothers come in there to give birth in the early spring. They then grow up learning to hunt and fish off the New Jersey coast before traveling up to Cape Cod."

That may explain why Mary Lee, a tagged 16-foot, 3,400-pound great white female has pinged multiple times in Barnegat Bay and off Island Beach State Park. And why a tagged 75-pound juvenile male great white nicknamed Jimmy Buffett pinged just yards from Barnegat Light beaches this past Wednesday, Aug. 23.

The seal could have also been bitten by a bull shark, which also lives in coastal New Jersey waters. It was not a mako shark, he said, as they live much farther out at sea.

Photos provided by the Marine Mammal Stranding Center, which exists solely on donations.