Ethan Sacks / NY Daily News – October 26, 2009
Based on the bite marks, experts say the larger shark must be twice its victim’s size. The smaller – relatively speaking – great white was hooked on a baited drum line when it was attacked, and was still alive when it was hauled onto a boat off north Stradbroke Island in Queensland.
The fatally wounded shark was found just a few miles away from the island’s popular beaches, a haven for surfers and bathers. “That cannibal thing is what great whites do; they’ll eat anything, including their own kind,” Hugh Edwards, a local shark expert, told Australia’s 7 News. “It would be sensible not to swim in that area for a little while.”
Though shark attacks worldwide dipped from 71 to 59 between 2007 and 2008, according to the International Shark Attack File, and few of them were attributed to great whites, the large shark had been vilified even before Steven Spielberg’s 1975 thriller.
Speculation is that this “Jaws”-sized shark has been lured to the area by the rotting carcuses of three whales that were trapped in anti-shark netting surrounding the Queensland coast. But Queensland Fisheries Minister Tim Mulherin told Australia’s Courier Mail that the grisly find shows why those nets were still essential.
Five people were fatally attacked in the late ’50s, the Courier Mail reported, but only one since the nets were put in place in 1962. “Whatever attacked and took chunks out of this big shark must be massive,” surfer Ashton Smith, 19, told the Daily Mail. “I’ve heard about the big one that’s lurking out there somewhere… We’re all being very, very cautious.”
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