What is the nickname for the thing that Lucas and Nichols believed would eventually arrive on New York's coastline?
After the second incident, scientists and the public presented theories to explain which species of shark was responsible for the Jersey Shore attacks or whether multiple sharks were involved. Lucas and Nichols proposed that a northward-swimming rogue shark was responsible. They believed it would eventually arrive along New York's coast: "Unless the shark came through the Harbor and went through the north through Hell Gate and Long Island Sound, it was presumed it would swim along the South Shore of Long Island and the first deep water inlet it reaches will be the Jamaica Bay."
Witnesses of the Beach Haven fatality estimated that the shark was 9 feet (3 m) long. A sea captain who saw the event believed it was a Spanish shark driven from the Caribbean Sea decades earlier by bombings during the Spanish–American War. Several fishermen claimed to have caught the "Jersey man-eater" in the days following the attacks. A blue shark was captured on July 14 near Long Branch, and four days later the same Thomas Cottrell who had seen the shark in Matawan Creek claimed to have captured a sandbar shark with a gillnet near the mouth of the creek.On July 14, Harlem taxidermist and Barnum and Bailey lion tamer Michael Schleisser caught a 7.5 foot (2.3 m), 325 pound (147 kg) shark while fishing in Raritan Bay only a few miles from the mouth of Matawan Creek. The shark nearly sank the boat before Schleisser killed it with a broken oar. When he opened the shark's belly, he removed a "suspicious fleshy material and bones" that took up "about two-thirds of a milk crate" and "together weighed fifteen pounds." Scientists identified the shark as a young great white and the ingested remains as human. Schleisser mounted the shark and placed it on display in the window of a Manhattan shop on Broadway but it was later lost. The only surviving photograph appeared in the Bronx Home News.No further attacks were reported along the Jersey Shore in the summer of 1916 after the capture of Schleisser's shark. Murphy and Lucas declared the great white to be the "Jersey man-eater". Skeptical individuals, however, offered alternative hypotheses. In a letter to The New York Times, Barrett P. Smith of Sound Beach, New York wrote:
Having read with much interest the account of the fatality off Spring Lake, N.J., I should like to offer a suggestion somewhat at variance with the shark theory. In my opinion it is most unlikely that a shark was responsible, and I believe it much more likely that the attack was made by a sea turtle. I have spent much time at sea and along shore, and have several times seen turtles large enough to inflict just such wounds. These creatures are of a vicious disposition, and when annoyed are extremely dangerous to approach, and it is my idea that Bruder may have disturbed one while it was asleep on or close to the surface.
Jersey man-eater