Two Sharks Found Dead on Cape Cod Because It’s So Cold in the US Right Now.
James Mullin was walking along Cape Cod Bay on Wednesday morning when he spotted a creature washed up on the beach.
Mullin was between Ellis Landing and Linnell Landing, and as he got closer, he saw that the carcass was a shark. “I found it quite exciting,” Mullin wrote in an email to the Times.
He took photos of the large animal and sent them to the Center of Coastal Studies in Provincetown. Researchers there determined that the creature was a thresher shark.
The Atlantic White Shark Conservancy said it visited that thresher shark Wednesday and another, similar one that had washed up dead on the Cape. They were working with the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Fisheries Service.
Both thresher sharks were male and likely stranded due to cold shock, the conservancy wrote in a Facebook post. The sharks were dissected and researchers took organ and tissue samples for further study.
Atlantic White Shark Conservancy officials suggest that if you spot something strange on a Cape beach, contact them, take a picture and note the exact location.
The AWSC team was called out to 2 stranded thresher sharks today. Both likely succumbed to cold shock. Read more: https://t.co/A5WU63Zin3 pic.twitter.com/HinIHrzK6e
— Atlantic White Shark Conservancy (@A_WhiteShark) December 27, 2017
