Cue the “Jaws” music.
A school of more than 10 sharks near Myrtle Beach, S.C. was making waves Tuesday. Literally.
The sharks — each appearing to be about 6 feet long — ventured past the wave break around noon, swishing through the shallow water, as seen in a video captured by King resident Cody Kinzer.
At one point in the video, a shark swerves toward a couple of beachgoers and comes close before turning away.
“The shark looked like it was about to the beach itself. It was so weird,” the 20-year-old Kinzer said. “A couple of them did that. The rest were just cruising, just chilling.”
Kinzer’s video garnered nearly 6 million views in fewer than 24 hours after being posted on the Internet. He said the sharks’ behavior seemed odd as there was no bait fish in the area to his knowledge and the sharks didn’t appear to be feeding.
People are also reading…
Sharks are also generally very solitary and don’t swim in schools. Yet Kinzer said he counted at least 10 on his side of the Pier at Garden City, which is about 8 miles south of Myrtle Beach, and his girlfriend, Micayla Hall, counted more on the other side.
“It’s one thing to see one rogue shark just chilling, but to see that number of sharks that close up is crazy,” said Kinzer, who surmised they may have been blacktip sharks.
“It was the last thing I expected to see.”
Aquarium husbandry staff at the N.C. Aquarium at Fort Fisher in Kure Beach as well as Joel Fodrie, an associate professor at UNC-Chapel Hill’s Institute of Marine Science in Morehead City, were able to confirm that the animals in the video were indeed sharks.
“They might be approaching 6 or 7 foot easy. Clearly some decent-sized sharks,” Fodrie said as he watched the video. “Could be a sandbar (shark) or a dusky or a really big blacktip. I wouldn’t rule out a bull shark with the broad head there.”
A shark-survey program at the university, which has been around 45 years, involves surveying the shark population off the coast every other week in the spring, summer and fall.
Out of more than 465 different species of sharks inhabiting the world’s oceans, only 50 species are found in North Carolina waters. Of those, 26 are found in the relatively shallow water near the shoreline but are not present here year-round.
The clear water on the day of the video reveals what would usually be hidden in the summer when the water is murkier, Fodrie said.
Congregations of sharks could have existed up and down the shore Tuesday, not only at the pier where the video was taken.
“If you’ve spent any time in the water, you’ve probably been within a couple hundred yards of a shark,” Fodrie said. “This video is notable and pretty cool. I wouldn’t say it’s uncommon to happen in nature.”
Aquarium spokeswoman Robin Nalepa at Kure Beach echoed the sentiment, noting that sharks are opportunistic feeders and could have been attracted to cut-up bait fish on the pier.
“It is not unusual to find them around fishing piers, following their prey and attracted by what gets thrown back in the water,” she said. “A shark’s sense of smell is acute.”
Some shark species visit coastal waters based on water temperatures, food supplies and breeding patterns.
But the presence of the sharks near the shore does not necessarily indicate an increase in shark encounters for the coming summer, Nalepa said.
A surge of shark attacks in 2015 set a world record ,with 98 incidents and six human fatalities, according to the International Shark Attack File.
The rise in attacks was attributed to the warm water that came in tandem with a record-hot year.
The data also showed the U.S. had 59 shark attacks, a record, with particularly high activity in Florida and the Carolinas.
“When anyone goes to the beach and into water, they are entering the home of the aquatic animals and sharks that live there,” Nalepa said. “While people are not on the menu for sharks, it’s important to be cautious and aware of your surroundings.”