Move over, Punxsutawney Phil

Just after Christmas, 2006, on December 29, public workers near the intersection of South Gilpin and Cypress Streets noticed a large fish lying on the shore of the Mahoning Creek. Upon examination, the fish turned out to be a three-foot bonnethead shark. Officer Heath Zeitler of the Punxsutawney police said "it might have been disposed of by some who had caught it while fishing elsewhere, or had previously kept it in a personal aquarium - a very large personal aquarium."

We might never know exactly where this shark came from. It had been theorized on Cryptomundo that the Punxsutawney shark could have wandered in from the Delaware River and through tributaries and such - while it is true that sharks have been known to wander into the Delaware, Jefferson County is extremely far from that river, and the Mahoning Creek empties into the Allegheny, anyway. Pittsburgh has seen several out-of-place animal reports over the years.

Delaware River whales, sharks and monsters

From the Universal York blog, this post on a whale displayed in a York County barn belonging to one Samuel Spangler sometime in the first half of the 1800s. The whale is described as having been caught in the Delaware River. This wouldn't be unheard of.

The Philadelphia Inquirer (December 6, 1994) reported that a 30-foot right whale (Eubalaena glacialis) dubbed "Waldo the Wrong-Way Right Whale" was found in the Delaware between Philadelphia and New Jersey. Wildlife officials managed to point it back towards the sea, but in early 1995 the whale had returned and was beached temporarily at an oil refinery near Pennsauken, New Jersey. "Waldo" was last seen in waters off Canada.

In April, 2005, NBC's Today carried reports on a beluga whale that had been seen around Trenton and Beverly, New Jersey. The animal was identified as one called Helis, whose native territory was in the St. Lawrence River. Helis had left the Delaware Bay around April 18, but by the 29th he was back in the river near Burlington Island. He was later seen near the Walt Whitman Bridge moving south. There were a few reports of the beluga from the Schuylkill River, but I don't know whether these were confirmed. By the end of the month, he had again moved out of the river.

The New York Times (May 1, 1922) reported that a 12-foot shark "said to have been of the man-eating variety" was killed by Joseph Fletcher in Tacony, Pennsylvania.

Several species of sharks live in the Delaware Bay and may make their way up the river; the Tacony shark is most likely to have been a bull shark. Other dangerous species such as the hammerhead and thresher exist in the Bay, but these prefer open waters and would not likely be found upstream. The bull shark is also the likely culprit in the attacks at Matawan, New Jersey in 1916.

The book Totally Bizarre Pennsylvania mentions a sighting of a supposed sea monster near the Benjamin Franklin Bridge in August, 1975. Peter Evangelidis reported that he and his girlfriend were along the river at Penn's Landing when he saw what he first thought to be a "bunch of black inner tubes or tires floating down the river, about 30 yards out" but that was moving against the current of the river. After a moment there was a violent splash and "this sleek head of an animal that should not have existed sprung its head out of the dark river no more than 30 feet from us". A canal cuts across Delaware, joining the Chesapeake Bay to the Delaware Bay. Evangelidis wondered whether the Chesapeake Bay sea serpent, Chessie, could have made it through the waterway and into Philadelphia. 1975 also saw reports of both sharks and whales from the Delaware, so it conceivably could have been one of these.

The above is the photo Evangelidis took of the creature.

The Matawan maneaters: a New Jersey horror

On the evening of July 1, 1916, Charles Vansant was swimming in the surf off Beach Haven in Ocean County (New Jersey) when he was attacked by a shark, which stripped the flesh from his left thigh. He died about an hour later. The second attack took place on July 6, when Charles Bruder was attacked off Spring Lake; he bled to death before the lifeguards even returned him to shore. But for all this, the horror was about to come even closer to home.

On July 12, 12-year old Lester Stillwell and other boys were playing at the Wyckoff Dock on Matawan Creek near the town of Matawan, some 16 miles inland. While there, the boys saw an 'old black weather-beaten board or a weathered log' which turned out, unfortunately, to be a shark. Stillwell was pulled underwater and killed; people attempted to rescue the boy. One of these, Watson Fisher, was also killed by the shark as he swam in search of the boy's body. Half an hour later and a half mile away, another young boy, Joseph Dunn, was attacked by a shark, but survived.

An 8-foot long great white shark was killed by Michael Schleisser in Raritan Bay near the mouth of Matawan Creek. It was widely reported that Schleisser's kill was the maneater, although differing opinions surfaced - in 1916, Barrett Smith wrote that it could have been a sea turtle, rather than a shark - an odd theory, to be sure. In modern times, biologists Richard Ellis and George Llano both feel that the shark may have been a bull shark (which can survive in fresh water) although ichthyologist George Burgess notes that Matawan Creek was extremely brackish and a great white may still be to blame.