Nearly 30 dead small dogfish sharks washed ashore this week along the Jersey shore, and while the discovery may have stunned beachgoers, wildlife officials say the sight is “not unusual.”

Michelle Greenling said she found the sharks while taking a walk Wednesday morning along a stretch of beach in Sea Isle City, New Jersey. She told WPVI that she initially wasn't alarmed by a few dead sharks, but soon found them scattered across about 10 blocks of beach.

"All of a sudden, you start seeing a concentration of small sand sharks, and I thought, 'Well, this is odd,'" Greenling said Wednesday.

Stephen Nagiewicz, a marine scientist at Stockton University, told the outlet that dogfish often travel in schools of hundreds or even thousands, making their presence along the Jersey Shore common, though finding so many dead at once is unusual, he said.

“Couple of things could be: there's something in the water, they got sick and died – That's probably unlikely since people haven't been affected. But more than likely, it was a bycatch for some commercial fishing hatch,” Nagiewicz said about the shocking sighting.

WPVI reported Wednesday that it contacted the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection to ask whether similar shark strandings have been reported elsewhere along the coast, but had not received a response.

On Thursday, a DEP spokesperson told The Independent that the discovery may be less mysterious than it initially appeared. Dogfish and other small sharks commonly move into shallow waters during the summer to forage for food, and some can become trapped inside sandbars when the tide recedes. Those fish may then become stranded and die before the tide returns, the spokesperson said.

They added that the agency is not investigating Wednesday’s discovery because it “does not appear to be an unusual event.”

The DEP spokesperson echoed what Nagiewicz told WPVI, saying summer strandings can happen when the sharks forage close to shore and get caught behind sandbars as the water moves out.

Another possible explanation, the DEP agreed, could be that the sharks may have been caught unintentionally by commercial or recreational fishermen and later discarded as bycatch.

The Independent also contacted the New Jersey Division of Fish and Wildlife for comment.