A Shark Was Spotted Swimming Down a Flooded New Jersey Street During the Nor'easter

Oct 02, 2026 by apost team

Drew Procaccino was at home in Surf City, a borough on Long Beach Island off the New Jersey coast, when a powerful nor'easter pushed floodwaters from Barnegat Bay into the surrounding streets. He looked out at the water filling his neighborhood. Something was moving in it.

"At first we thought it was just a fish, which would have been cool," he told Storyful, "but a baby shark was even better."

The animal's dorsal fin was cutting through the murky water just outside his home. He started filming. The shark — small, calm, apparently unbothered by the unusual setting — swam past the house, disappeared into a driveway, and then made its way west toward the bay it had come from.

The creature was subsequently identified as a smooth dogfish — a species that marine biologist Greg Skomal, of the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries, told ABC News is "a very small, harmless shark that is common in those waters." Smooth dogfish have flattened teeth used to crush crabs and other prey. They pose no danger to people. They do, however, pose a significant risk to the composure of anyone who happens to look out their window during a flood and sees one swimming past.

"Is that a little shark?" a woman is heard saying off-camera in the footage, her voice carrying exactly the tone of someone who has looked outside expecting to see a flooded street and found something considerably more specific.

The nor'easter brought damaging winds, dangerous surf, and coastal flooding across the East Coast. The shark, it seems, was just passing through.

The smooth dogfish —

— scientific name Mustelus canis — is one of the most common shark species in the western Atlantic, ranging from New England to Brazil. It typically grows to between three and four feet in length. It is not aggressive. It does not eat people. What it does do, apparently, is navigate flooded neighborhood streets in New Jersey with a degree of calm that most residents under the same circumstances did not manage to match.

The storm system that produced the scene was one of the more powerful early-season nor'easters in recent memory — bringing heavy rain, sustained winds, and significant coastal flooding to communities up and down the East Coast, particularly on barrier islands like Long Beach Island, which are vulnerable by design. The flooding that carried the smooth dogfish into Surf City's streets was the same flooding that stranded cars in Ocean City, closed roads across the shore region, and prompted emergency declarations in several New Jersey counties.

The shark was not the only unusual sight generated by the storm. Reports of stranded wildlife, displaced animals, and flooded properties circulated widely across the region in the days following the event. The smooth dogfish, at least, appeared to take it all in its stride.

There is something about a creature that belongs in the ocean appearing in a driveway — calmly, without drama, as if it had somewhere to be — that lands differently than most flooding footage. Procaccino summed it up well. A fish would have been cool. A shark was better. The internet agreed unanimously.

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Did the video of the shark swimming through a flooded New Jersey street make your day? Do you think nature always finds a way to surprise us? Let us know in the comments and pass this on to your family, friends, and anyone who needs something to smile about today!

Please follow this link to watch the full video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O7HP7I_T1ig