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A stranded nice white shark was reported in Die Dam space close to Gansbaai on Monday, 20 June. The sud-adult feminine was lifeless and retrieved by Marine Dynamics Academy (MDA).
She was rolled right into a trawl internet and transported again to the Worldwide Marine Volunteers lodge in Kleinbaai to be necropsied by senior white shark biologist Alison Towner and the MDA staff the next day.
Detailed photogrammetry and measurements have been taken by conservationists Alina Pryazhkina and Ettienne Roets, along with volunteers from the MDA.
The two.9-metre-long shark was torn open on the pectoral girdle and had what gave the impression to be killer whale tooth impressions seen on the caudal fin, and it had a Domier dart head from an outdated acoustic tag imbedded within the musculature on the left facet of its dorsal fin base.
Towner suspects this to be an animal they tagged in Mossel Bay two years in the past, however as a result of degraded situation of the dorsal fin, and full lack of tag or tether, it’s not doable to confirm. The flesh was eliminated and inspected containing the dart head and no indicators of lesions, or muscle injury was evident, the wound had absolutely healed across the tag in a round form, walling it off and supporting the very fact it was an older tag that had probably fallen off with time.
Swabs for genetic materials have been taken above and under the pectoral tear damage and the doable raker marks on the caudal fin, in addition to two management websites on the physique and have been frozen.
On slicing the ventral flesh open, the shark’s liver and the center have been confirmed to be lacking. The abdomen contents contained one subadult Cape fur seal. It had probably been freshly consumed as a result of little or no decomposition and had been bitten in two, on the hind flippers. The shark’s inner organs all regarded comparatively wholesome, aside from one small fleshy lesion on the cloaca.
The shark’s head was frozen will collected by authorities’s DFFE together with all different samples, and distributed to permitted white shark researchers.
The conclusion on this explicit animal’s demise was predation by killer whales, primarily based on the time of yr, the sorts of accidents and the truth that the identified killer whale pair Port and Starboard – confirmed to predate on massive sharks in South Africa – have been within the area two days earlier than. That is the eighth white shark confirmed to have died as a result of killer whale predation in South Africa. The true quantity is probably going greater as not all carcasses will wash ashore.
Discover out extra:
Marine Dynamics
Dyer Island Conservation Belief
Footage: Dyer Island Conservation Belief
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