September 2, 2007 -- This shark sparked a near-panic when it was spotted in the surf at Rockaway Beach yesterday.
Hundreds of splish-splashers enjoying the beautiful weather went scrambling for shore when the toothy fish showed up. Swimming was banned for hours along a 14-block stretch of beach as the shark swam nearby.
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“I didn’t want to get eaten,” one frightened teen cried.
Rockaway Beach looked like Amity Island yesterday as hundreds of screaming swimmers scrambled out of the surf after a 6-foot shark - and its ominous dorsal fin - was spotted close to the shore.
"It was scary," said Julio Lento, 15, of Brooklyn.
"I didn't want to get eaten."
Experts believe it was a relatively harmless thresher shark - but during the mad dash for land, the killer great white "Jaws" was on everyone's mind.
Sunbathers shouted, "Shark!" and "Get out of the water!" while lifeguards frantically blew their whistles to warn people.
Those who dared look behind could see a fin circling about 20 feet from the shoreline.
The beach was shut down immediately from Beach 107th Street to Beach 121st Street, said a Parks Department spokesman.
It reopened some five hours later.
Emergency responders from the FDNY and NYPD rushed to the scene, and a helicopter hovered over the water searching for the menacing-looking creature.
The shark was first spotted around 10:30 a.m. near Beach 109th Street by a couple of eagle-eyed beachgoers about 15 feet off the shore.
"They were saying, 'What's that?' And I looked up and I said, 'What is that?' " said the lifeguard on duty, who only gave his first name, Justin.
At the time, few people were in the water.
They watched incredulously as the tail flapped in and out of the ocean.
Moments later, the big fish - alive but clearly suffering - washed up on shore near Beach 109th Street.
"This thing was sick or lost its mother," said Justin.
"It was flipping around. He had a big, floppy tail like an eel."
Three do-gooders took matters into their own hands and dragged it by its tail into the water, he said.
Once back in the surf, the shark seemed to swim away. He was spotted going out about 50 feet.
But an hour later, when the water was full of swimmers, the shark returned - scaring the daylights out of people and prompting officials to keep swimmers out of the water until about 3:30 p.m.
The fright put a serious damper on the holiday weekend.
"It's been tough on the kids," said Eileen Quinn. "Three or four days and they're going back to school."
"I came here with my kids to swim, and now they can't go in the water," said another frustrated mother, Janice Darby, 28.
"What's the sense of coming to the beach if you can't go in? And this is the last weekend to do it."
Still, it's not every day there's a shark in the Big Apple, and scores of thwarted bathing beauties enjoyed checking out the big fish.
For hours, the landlubber shark circled the water, creeping close to shore.
"It was incredible," said José Saavedra, 35.
"I've never seen anything like it. The shark was dark gray, and it was pretty big. It kept coming in and out of the shore."
He added, "I'm from South Beach, in Miami, and I've never seen anything like this."
Keith DiLorenzo was so thrilled to see the rare sea dweller that he didn't want to leave the water when the frenzied mob came rushing out.
While his relatives yelled to him - "Get out! Get out!" - the 12-year-old marine buff tried to get closer to the action.
"I wanted the shark to get close to the shore, so I found a sharp clam and I cut my finger and put drops of blood in the water," said DiLorenzo, of Floral Park, L.I.
His grandmother, Pat DiLorenzo, said afterward, "When he got on the shore, all I thought was, 'Thank God summer's over.' "
She probably had nothing to fear, said Hans Walters, the New York Aquarium's animal department supervisor and resident shark expert.
After looking at a photo of the shark that was beached, he said it was a thresher shark.
"These are deep-water fish," he said. "It makes me believe someone caught him and released him."
"I'm just surprised he's this close."
Telltale signs of thresher sharks include a tail that's about half as long as their body, as well as weak teeth and jaws.
"These shark are not dangerous," said Walters.
"The fact that he kept swimming toward shore leads me to believe that he's dying."
Larry Penny, Hampton Natural Resources director, said swimmers should be cautious around all types of sharks.
Threshers are "not very dangerous," he said in a 2005 interview with The Post.
"But all sharks when they're hungry, even the blue shark, have been known to attack."
He spoke after a thresher shark - which, on occasion, have been known to injure divers with accidental swipes of their long tails - was spotted at Tiana Beach in Southampton.
Additional reporting by Erika Martinez
