Studies have indicated that regular exercise can be great for your body as well as your mind and that it is better to take a relaxing walk along the shore (if you are close to one). Sometimes, however, the changed tide washes up a surprise. One such surprise was when Florida resident Betty Gardner Gonzalez was stunned to find that a huge dead shark had washed up on the shores of Melbourne Beach in Brevard County.
According to a report from Fox 35 Orlando, Gonzalez made his walk around 6.30 am on Monday, January 4th. As a regular visitor to the beach, Gonzalez has seen pictures of abundant wildlife along the shelf coastline, including heron, ospreys, and apparently occasional dead sharks. The shark is also thought to be the gray nurse shark as the sand tiger shark (Carcharias taurus). These giant fish can live for about 15 years or more, reaching anywhere from 2 to 3 meters (6.5 to 10.5 feet) in length.
The beauty of their teeth and the death machine around them may make you think that they are aggressive animals, but the C-bull is a species that usually bothers humans if people bother them first. They have an unusual eating technique that shows them the jerky air that makes them enjoyable. In doing so, the shark can float in search of prey for free. The first clue to Gonzalez’s that something bad was happening on the beach in the morning was the presence of vultures surrounding the beach corpse. He was curious as to what might have been the cause of the shark’s death; he jumped to find clues to the animal but could not find any statement of what happened.
“It’s just sad, especially since I don’t know what caused it to die,” Gonzalez told Fox 35 in a television interview. “I flipped the shark over, I just kind of got to see if there was any kind of mark and I can’t tell you how it was killed.” A deadly algal blossom known as the Red Tide is sometimes damaged by the organism Karenia brevis in waters around Florida; although there is no evidence that this shark was the cause of death at the time of writing. Its presence can cause skin irritation and coughing in humans and can prove fatal for marine animals.
In 2018, carcasses of turtles, dolphins, and even whale sharks were considered tidal products. In recent years the Florida coastline has seen some more unusual items washing up on its shores, including 16 bricks of cocaine and even a shipwreck.
