A 28-foot-long dead basking shark weighing several tons has washed ashore on a Rhode Island beach.
A homeowner in the Misquamicut beach area of Westerly reported the shark to police on Sunday morning.
The shark has been attracting curious onlookers today who took photos and touched it
Police contacted the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management which then asked Mystic Aquarium to investigate.
The aquarium sent a staff member to the beach who took photos of the shark.Biologists with the Northeast Fisheries Science Center are expected to perform a necropsy to determine the cause of death.
According to Mystic Aquarium, which sent staff members to the scene, basking sharks are giant migratory fish that feed on nothing but plankton. They are common in New England waters.
While their body shape and size resemble that of great white sharks, basking sharks can be differentiated by their massive jaws and gill slits.
Basking sharks are filter feeders that sieve small animals from the water.
As the basking shark swims with its mouth open, masses of water filled with prey flow through its mouth. The prey includes plankton, invertebrates, baby fish, and fish eggs. After closing its mouth, the shark uses gill rakers that filter the nourishment from the water.
The basking shark is also called the sunfish, the bone shark, the elephant shark, the sailfish shark, and the big mouth shark.
This particular shark is believed to have died from natural causes before washing ashore.
The migratory species – a filter feeder not harmful to humans - is common from Canada from Florida.
According to BBC Nature, only the whale shark is larger than the basking shark.
Female basking sharks are up to 33 feet; males are up to 45 feet and weighs up to 4 tons.
Despite a superficial similarity to the fearsome great white shark and a massive jaw one metre wide, basking sharks are actually harmless filter feeders.
They use more than 5,000 gill rakers to strain plankton from around 1.5 million litres of water per hour. Basking sharks are born travelers, covering large distances in search of food, at the very leisurely pace of only three miles per hour.
A homeowner in the Misquamicut beach area of Westerly reported the shark to police on Sunday morning.
The shark has been attracting curious onlookers today who took photos and touched it
Police contacted the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management which then asked Mystic Aquarium to investigate.
The aquarium sent a staff member to the beach who took photos of the shark.Biologists with the Northeast Fisheries Science Center are expected to perform a necropsy to determine the cause of death.
According to Mystic Aquarium, which sent staff members to the scene, basking sharks are giant migratory fish that feed on nothing but plankton. They are common in New England waters.
While their body shape and size resemble that of great white sharks, basking sharks can be differentiated by their massive jaws and gill slits.
Basking sharks are filter feeders that sieve small animals from the water.
As the basking shark swims with its mouth open, masses of water filled with prey flow through its mouth. The prey includes plankton, invertebrates, baby fish, and fish eggs. After closing its mouth, the shark uses gill rakers that filter the nourishment from the water.
The basking shark is also called the sunfish, the bone shark, the elephant shark, the sailfish shark, and the big mouth shark.
This particular shark is believed to have died from natural causes before washing ashore.
The migratory species – a filter feeder not harmful to humans - is common from Canada from Florida.
According to BBC Nature, only the whale shark is larger than the basking shark.
Female basking sharks are up to 33 feet; males are up to 45 feet and weighs up to 4 tons.
Despite a superficial similarity to the fearsome great white shark and a massive jaw one metre wide, basking sharks are actually harmless filter feeders.
They use more than 5,000 gill rakers to strain plankton from around 1.5 million litres of water per hour. Basking sharks are born travelers, covering large distances in search of food, at the very leisurely pace of only three miles per hour.
Source: DM , News8
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