OK so imagine this. you're walking along the beach in Sea Isle City, New Jersey, having a perfectly normal morning, and you come across... 29 dead sharks. Just lying there on the sand. Two dozen plus five. All sharks. On the beach.

So this actually happened to a woman just out for a morning beach stroll and she stumbled into what has to be one of the weirdest things you could possibly find. She counted 29 of them which is a very specific and unsettling number of sharks to find in one place, and you know what, I can't stop thinking about that.

Marine experts are looking into it and right now there are two main theories. The first is that the sharks stranded themselves during changing tides, which is a thing that happens sometimes when shallow water shifts faster than the animals can navigate. The second is that fishermen discarded them offshore, which... OK that one is a little harder to sit with.

If the tide theory is right, it's sad but natural. Tides change, currents shift, and sometimes marine animals end up in places they can't get back from. It happens. Nature is beautiful and also occasionally very blunt about things.

The fishing theory is the one that doesn't feel great. If commercial or recreational fishermen caught these sharks, removed whatever they needed, and then tossed the rest back like garbage, that's a really depressing thought. Sharks aren't just props in a Jaws movie. They're genuinely essential to ocean ecosystems and they keep everything in balance, and dumping two dozen of them like they don't matter would be a massive waste.

The [Shore News Network](https://www.shorenewsnetwork.com/mystery-surrounds-29-dead-sharks-found-along-sea-isle-city-beach/) reported that the sharks appear to be small dogfish sharks, which are one of the most abundant shark species out there. That detail doesn't make 29 of them lying on a beach any less weird, but it does give you a slightly better picture of the scene.

I genuinely love sharks. I wrote about a woman with shark tattoos who holds a world record for them, and I covered Shark Week mysteries too. Sharks are incredible and ancient creatures and they are so important to the oceans they patrol, and now 29 of them are lying on a beach in Sea Isle City and nobody can say for certain why.

That's the part that sits with you. The not knowing. It could be a natural event that just looks alarming, or it could be something else entirely. Either way, 29 sharks on a beach during a morning walk is a sight that would stop you in your tracks and make you rethink your entire day.

I really hope the answer is the tides. Because the alternative means people did this on purpose, and I'm just not ready for that today.