Watch: Great White Shark caught off the coast of the Jersey Shore this weekend

The crew of Reel Innovation, based out of Harvey Cedars on Long Beach Island made the catch of a lifetime this weekend, a great white shark. Luckily it was a youngster and didn’t pose much of a problem. Great white shark sightings have been increasing over the years at the Jersey Shore thanks in part to a tracking organization called Ocearch that tracks dozens of the sea creatures as they migrate north and south each season.

Great whites are a protected species and unlike in the movies, you can’t hang your catch and take pictures. If you accidentally catch one, you have to release and luckily for this little one…and the crew, the hook caught the the corner of its mouth for a safe release.

We evaluated those dimensions using 52 relevant metrics, which are listed below with their corresponding weights. Each metric was graded on a 100-point scale, with a score of 100 representing the most favorable living conditions. For metrics marked with an asterisk (*), the square root of the population was used to calculate the population size in order to avoid overcompensating for minor differences across states.