A man fishing for tuna off the east coast of Japan has shared remarkable images of a dead white shark. Shark clearly overestimated itself when it decided to eat a large sea turtle. The sea animal suffocated in his prey.
Greg Vella told his story on Facebook, that he was fishing when he heard over the radio that a white shark had been spotted swimming around with a turtle in its mouth. But Jokes were made about it and he didn’t pay much attention to it. “I was out commercial “ken ken” style fishing for tuna (Japan, Pacific Ocean side) when I heard chatter on the radio that there was a white shark swimming around with a big sea turtle in the mouth. People started to joke about it, so I did not pay it any more attention.”
Tangled up
However, the animal was found dead the next day. It was entangled in a few nets. The captains who had seen the shark the day before and who he spoke to, said that the animal was in a bad state then. It seemed that the giant turtle could no longer be released from its mouth. The turtle was completely stuck. “The captains I interviewed who saw the mighty shark the day before, said it looked close to death, as it could not dislodge the giant turtle.
According to Vella, the shark weighed more than 2,000 kilograms.
It is not the first time that something similar has been observed. Two years ago, marine biologist Lauren Arthur saw something similar. She told the scientific news site Live Science about it. Then it was a lemon shark that had tried to swallow a balloon cone fish near the Maldives, in the Indian Ocean. Balloonfish inflate their bodies when they are in danger to deter enemies. They do this by sucking themselves in with water. This animal had also done that when it was attacked by the shark. But because of that, it got stuck in its mouth.
Teeth
The shark may have tried to spit the fish out again – sharks can just surrender too much food – but due to the rear-facing teeth in its mouth, the balloon cone fish became increasingly stuck. The fish then blocked the gills of the shark, causing it to choke. Both animals did not survive.
