A great white shark has washed up dead on a beach in Massachusetts in mysterious circumstances. The poor shark had a red tint to its head and body, as well as having three lead weights inside its stomach.
The Atlantic White Shark Conservancy said on Thursday that the nine-foot-long young shark washed up on a beach near to the Pamet River in Truro.
The shark was then operated on at the location to try to ascertain what happened to it. Lisa Natanson, of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, who performed the necropsy, was the person who made the bizarre discovery of the weights.
Samples taken from this study will provide the official cause of death for the shark.
This incident comes just weeks after beaches in the surrounding area of the United States were closed as a result of two shark sightings and one shark attack.
Sixty-one-year-old William Lytton was bitten by a shark near Truro on 15 August. He suffered wounds to his leg and torso - enough to send him to hospital - that were consistent with shark bites.
He says he was swimming about 30 metres from the shore when he felt the shark biting him.
He is now in a good condition, but it is not immediately clear what type of shark attacked him. The incident involving Mr Lytton was the first to occur in the area since 2012. The last time someone from the State of Massachusetts died as a result of shark attack was in 1936.
Of this latest shark death, the Atlantic White Shark Conservancy released a statement on Facebook that read: "Early this morning the Atlantic White Shark Conservancy received a call of a dead white shark along the Pamet River in Truro."
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"The shark was a juvenile male, measuring about 9 ft in length. Scientists from the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) were notified and Dr. Lisa Natanson of NOAA came out to perform a necropsy and take samples.
"While examining the stomach she found three lead weights inside."
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Shark attacks are pretty prevalent in the news at the moment. This is largely down to it being summer in the Northern Hemisphere. That means that more people are near the sea, or swimming.
However, it has been suggested that climate change could mean that great white sharks are moving further north, and that there is a real possibility that they will be around British waters before too long.
That doesn't help solve the mystery of what happened to this shark, it just gives you more reasons to stay out of the sea at Blackpool this weekend.
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Topics: Great White, US News, Animals, shark