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In mid-August, a team of marine biologists from Massachusetts visited the waters of the Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary, just east of Boston. Their mission: to mark a few basking sharks – the second largest shark cash on Earth, and a predator still considered very mysterious to scientists. But soon after the team reached open water, another marine mammoth caught their attention: a young humpback whale, floating dead on the surface of the ocean.
Then the sharks arrived.
“Eight or more great white sharks found the carcass, ”and tore its fat into pieces, David Wiley, an environmental researcher at the Stellwagen Bank, told Live Science.
It was an “unimaginable sight,” said Wiley, crowned with thousands of hungry seabirds descending to pluck pieces of whale tissue from the bloody water – and you can see the havoc for yourself in a short story. video (above) from Stellwagen Bank and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
“It was nature in action,” Wiley said. “Everything dies so that something else can be consumed. Nothing is wasted.”
Humpback whales, which can grow to the size of a school bus, roam the world and are commonly seen in high latitude feeding grounds like Stellwagen Bank in the summer. Unfortunately, that can put them in the way of big boats and fishing nets – the two main threats humpback whales face in the wild, Wiley said. One of those threats is probably the cause of death here.
One of the biologists at the scene in Stellwagen examined the fingerprint-like pattern under the fluke (or caudal fin) of the dead humpback whale and identified it as the one-year-old calf of a known mother whale named Venom. (Wiley couldn’t tell if the mother’s name was a Reference Spider-Man). Given the young age of the dead whale, it’s likely the calf was the victim of some sort of human interaction, Wiley said. However, by the time the researchers arrived, the body had been so badly chewed on by the sharks that it was impossible to find clear indications of what had killed it.
While the sight of the dead calf was grim, the researcher also knew that the ensuing binge eating was an extremely rare sight and a rare chance to see great whites on top of the water. The team took the opportunity to tag five of the feasting sharks with special acoustic sensors, which will help NOAA scientists track the movement and behavior of the enigmatic predators as they cruise around Stellwagen, and finally south to their wintering grounds.
The whale, meanwhile, could still play a major role in revealing the secret lives of the sanctuary’s underwater residents.
“As soon as the sharks eat the fat, the carcass will become negatively buoyant and fall off,” Wiley said. “Whale Falls can feed hundreds of animals for years to come. “
Researchers were unable to tag the whale before it fell, and the carcass is likely at the bottom of the sea, Wiley said, so research will be needed to locate the body’s last resting place. But if researchers can find it, it will be the first whale fall ever seen at Stellwagen Bank, Wiley said. Studying it could reveal multitudes about the region’s ecology – and give Venom’s deceased calf a scientific legacy few whales can claim.
Originally posted on Live Science.
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