When Is The Best Time To Spot Sharks? 2 White Sharks Spotted At Jersey Shore and Delaware Beaches

During this Memorial Day weekend, two great white sharks were spotted at Jersey Shore and Delaware beaches. A 16-foot, 3,456-pound great white shark Mary Lee surfaced in the water near Cape May, New Jersey and Rehoboth Beach, Delaware Saturday and remained in the area Sunday, according to the not-for-profit shark-tracking group OCEARCH.

Another shark, Cisco, which, weighed around 362 pounds and measured 8-feet, 7-inches was also spotted at the mouth of the Delaware Bay, slightly closer to Lewes, Delaware than Cape May, according to OCEARCH.

Read: Great White Sharks Headed For Cape Cod, Massachusetts, Study Reveals

Tobey Curtis, a shark researcher with the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) National Marine Fisheries Service in Gloucester, Massachusetts, and his colleagues found out in 2014 that great white sharks are seasonal travelers, moving up and down the U.S. East Coast at different times of year. They spend the winter months south of North Carolina, then start heading north in the late spring, according to National Geographic.

For example, in South Africa, which, is one of the few White Shark hot spots in the world, white sharks can be spotted from April through to August or September. In Gansbaai, which is a fishing town and popular tourist destination in the Overberg District Municipality, Western Cape, South Africa, white sharks can be seen from April to September. During the remaining months of September to March, the sharks use an area located three kilometres to the north in the shallow bay known as Shark Bay, according to Marine Dynamics Sharks Tours.

If one peers over the sandstone cliffs at California's San Onofre State Beach in the springtime, one might come across massive shadows in the shallows, which are of sharks, USA Today reported.

"Like all of southern California where there are plenty of sharks and virtually no recorded attacks on humans, people don't fear the animals and continue doing what they're doing in most cases," said Jeff Kurr, a filmmaker for Discovery Channel's Shark Week.

Kurr said it's important to keep in mind "you're more likely to be killed by a neighborhood dog, a cow, a deer, even a toaster than to die in a shark attack." He has even been in the water with tiger sharks, bull sharks and white sharks for the past 25 years, usually with bait in the water, but every time the sharks had shown interest only in the bait, never in him.

"I think that tells us that when a shark bites a human it's purely by accident, perhaps a case of mistaken identity that often occurs in murky water," he explained. "A shark attack, if you can even call it that, perhaps shark bite is a better word, is incredibly rare if you consider how many people use the ocean for recreation."

According to NBC10, OCEARCH expedition leader Chris Fischer said: "People should be terrified of an ocean that's not full of sharks, they keep everything in balance," Fischer said. "So, if we want to make sure that our great grandchildren can eat fish sandwiches, we need lots of big sharks."