A 31-tonne whale carcass rotting on a popular Western Australia beach has created an extraordinary — and potentially dangerous — spectacle, drawing large sharks to within a few feet of the sand while authorities struggle to remove it.
The roughly 13-meter (42 feet) humpback washed ashore at Perth’s City Beach on Monday, September 28, after being spotted offshore. Since then, multiple sharks have cruised the shallows, including a great white estimated at about five meters (16 feet) long.
Authorities closed beaches throughout the Town of Cambridge and deployed drum lines in an effort to tag sharks feeding around the carcass.
Beachgoer Lydia Moss described seeing two sharks move in on the whale. “They’re bigger than I thought they were going to be,” she told PerthNow. “They look big, massive.”
And the sharks don’t appear eager to leave.
Related: Watch: 16-Foot Great White Shark Swims Just Offshore as Crowd Watches in Australia
Experts have warned that oils and other material released by the carcass could continue attracting sharks even after the whale itself is removed. Fisheries Minister Jackie Jarvis said beaches would stay closed while significant shark activity continued, adding: “As long as there’s shark activity, the beach will remain closed.”
See footage of the hungry sharks swarming close to shore, linked here, and below:
Dr. Vanessa Pirotta, a whale expert and wildlife scientist from Macquarie University, warned that the danger won’t disappear once the whale is removed.
“You’ve got potentially 20,000 kilos plus of a whale, a school bus dead weight… on the beach,” she explained. Because the heavy animal is embedded in the sand and oozing blubber and natural juices, Dr. Pirotta cautioned, “The sharks could persist beyond the whale carcass physically being there… it could be weeks.”
Removing the whale has become its own ordeal. Crews wrapped the decomposing carcass in tarpaulins and dragged it roughly 1.5 kilometers along the beach Wednesday, but the operation stalled because a crane large enough to lift the 31-tonne animal was unavailable. Officials now plan to haul it away for burial at a landfill. The job is expected to cost between $60,000 and $100,000.
“It’s a big operation,” Town of Cambridge Mayor Gary Mack said.
The scene is especially unnerving given what happened less than two weeks earlier farther north along Perth’s coast. On September 18, 63-year-old Greg O’Neill was killed by a large great white while swimming close to shore at Sorrento Beach.
His death — the third fatal shark attack in Western Australia this year — has already intensified debate over shark mitigation.
For now, City Beach remains closed, the whale remains ashore, and some very large predators are still patrolling the shallows.
Original Post from this site