It’s easy to forget how little we know about Earth. The deep sea, for instance, remains mostly unexplored.
So, it shouldn’t be a surprise when scary questions present themselves, like, “What could have possibly eaten a three meter great white shark?”
There are not many sea creatures that could hunt and devour a 3m (10ft) great white shark however after the discovery of a tracking tag washed up on a Western Australia beach with signs it had been bleached by stomach acid and its data showed rapid changes in depth, evidence of 1,900ft dive, and a rise in temperature reflecting the animal that ate it. Shark Alpha, as the beast was named, nearly reached 2000ft (609m) before her body temperature zoomed from just over 40 degrees to 78 degrees.
The shark had been part of a study in 2004 to track her movements.
Film maker Mr Dave Riggs has been investigating the discovery by speaking to whale hunters of Bremer Bay area to try to find out what sort of predator could have done this.
From a study of this data Mr Riggs was able to see that super predator has a stomach at least 1m (3ft 3in) wide. However, he discounts killer whales because the 26C (78.8F) recorded on the tag was far too low to be from inside one. Mr Riggs added “I am not suggesting a prehistoric beast is roaming out there. This is nature at work and we’re just trying to get the bottom of something that happened years ago. I don’t know if we will ever know what happened to that animal but if the reports are true from the whaler, we may get a glimpse of what they saw”
It has been the talk of the office here at the Greenwich Maritime Institute with our very own Chris Bellamy commenting that the create must be cold blooded…..
However the mystery continues and it goes to show that we don’t seem to know what everything that lives in our oceans
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z_QyGANCUJI