— Shark sightings closed New Jersey beaches for the second day in a row Thursday, causing more curiosity than panic among bathers, lifeguards said.
"Yes, there are really sharks out there," Seaside Park lifeguard C.J. Ratshin, 21, wearily told the one of the "tons of people coming up and asking if the sharks will eat them."
Raising his voice to be heard over news helicopters buzzing the beach in vain attempts to spot the long-gone sharks, Ratshin told bathers, "the sharks won’t eat you if you don’t step on them."
What were described as a pair of 5-foot sharks swam about 50 feet offshore of two small beaches just north of Island Beach State Park Thursday morning, forcing beach closings for about two hours, authorities said.
It was the second time in two days and the third time this week sharks cruising close to shore forced temporary beach closings along a five-mile stretch of Ocean County.
On Wednesday, beaches in neighboring towns Seaside Park and then Seaside Heights were closed as a two sharks slowly made their way up the coast, occasionally straying inside the surf line, said Joe Gomulka, head of the Seaside Park Beach Patrol.
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Gomulka said the sharks were not positively identified, but their erratic swimming patterns raised concerns they might be sick or injured. Another shark sighting closed beaches Monday at Ocean Beach, about five miles up the coast.
Sharks swimming off New Jersey in summer are about as unusual as traffic on the Garden State Parkway, said experts, noting several of the estimated 50 shark species in these waters give birth here.
But this summer, for the first time, the U.S. Coast Guard issued a shark warning for the Northeast, after a seven-foot juvenile great white was caught and released off of Massachusetts. Lifeguards also said there has been an unusually high number of shark sightings for mid-July.
One explanation may be, not the sharks, but the weather.
"The water has been usually warm for this time of year, which could attract the sharks who usually arrive in September when there’s nobody on the beach to see them," said George Burgess, a University of Florida ichthyologist and director of the International Shark Attack File.
According to the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, in-shore water temperatures off the New Jersey coast Thursday ranged from nearly 77 degrees at Sandy Hook to above 80 degrees at Cape May. That is approximately six degrees warmer than average for mid-July.
"Warm water can attract an abundance of food fish and sharks go whether the food is," Burgess said. "The good news, they do not consider people to be particularly good food."
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No one has been hurt or even harassed by the sharks off Ocean County this week and the Coast Guard quietly rescinded its shark alert after "Washington accused us of overreacting," a Coast Guard spokesman said.
The last confirmed man-shark close encounter in New Jersey was nearly 50 years ago, when a wader stumbled over a nurse shark who bit him by reflex. The last shark fatality here was in 1926, but shark tales in New Jersey will always be taken seriously because of one thing: the day the man-eater came to Matawan.
In a single week in 1916, four people were killed and one critically injured by a rogue shark that struck off Beach Haven and Spring Lake before swimming miles up the Matawan Creek. The attacks were the basis for the book and the movie "Jaws" and New Jersey became famous for the most unconventional shark attack in marine history.
Even the sharks here may have a sense of drama. In July 2005, almost 30 years to the day after the launch of the movie "Jaws," something did slice the foot of a 17-year-old surfing off Long Beach Island.
Experts never agreed on whether Ryan Horton took a nibble from a shark, or badly sliced himself on the fin of his surfboard, but the odds are against a shark, said Ken Able, a biologist with the Rutgers Institute for Marine and Coastal Sciences.
"We have many, many shark sightings and very, very few actual attacks," said Able, adding that a large chunk of the sightings may actually be dolphins or even cow nose rays mistaken for sharks. "The odds are miniscule."
In Ocean County Thursday, the locals were more concerned about sharks hurting the economy than a swimmer.
"This isn’t Jaws. We don’t have a maneater on the loose," said Phil Iozia, 34, a bartender from Seaside Park, who worried most of a panic scaring off beachgoers.
Becky Zak, 26, of Toms River, said she had more pressing concerns than the sharks: "It’s too hot not to go in the water. It’s not gonna scare me until I see a shark swim up to me."
Mary Ann Spoto contributed to this article.