Great white sharks feast on a whale carcass in Cape Cod, video goes viral
Great white sharks devouring the whale carcass. (Image credits: Captain John Boats/Facebook)
Recently, a heartbreaking moment soon turned into a camera-ready moment for some visitors to Cape Cod.
This happened in the Stellwagen Bank national marine sanctuary waters where the decomposing carcass of a year-old humpback calf proved to be an unimaginably heartbreaking sight for some people on a whale-watching cruise.
However, soon, when two large great white sharks appeared and started eating the remains, it became a photographic opportunity and a rare sighting for shark researchers.
The crew of Captain John Boats posted a short video clip on Facebook showing the apex predators, one of which is 18-foot feasting on the carcass.Peter Corkeron awhale expert,at the New England Aquarium's, describes it as one of the biggest smorgasbord(orfeast) a shark could dream of.
Boat captain John Goggin told the Boston Herald that people on board were excited and that a lot of people were exclaiming 'Oh my God!' and 'Wow!'.
According to researchers funded by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa), eight great whites appeared over the next two days, along with blue sharks and a variety of seabirds.
They then tagged five new great whites with the Massachusetts division of marine fisheries' assistance. The researchers were already familiar with six of those that turned up to feed.
Anothervideo posted by a Noaa-funded group shows a tourist boat in the background of this encounter. According to them, the carcass would provide nourishment to marine creatures for months to come.
The Center for Coastal Studies, a non-profit from Provincetown, Massachusetts identified that the humpback was an unnamed male calf born in 2020 to an adult whale named Venom.
Scientists and whale watchers off the coast of Massachusetts and CSS scientists were familiar with this individual, the group said in a Facebook post. Although at this time, they don't know what caused his death.
According to them, the fact that an individual has died is a sad event, but recording these occurrences is essential for long-term population studies.In addition, they say that these efforts are also required to unravel the current unusual humpback whale mortality phenomenon occurring along the Atlantic coast.
