When an entangled North Atlantic right whale was found dead off South Carolina on Feb. 27, several great white sharks were spotted by the airplane crew.
Capt. Chip Michalove, owner of Outcast Sport Fishing, developed a plan. He’d wait for a storm system to pass and try to find the carcass, and hope there were still a few sharks to possibly catch and tag for scientific research.
He set out Friday morning and not only managed to locate the carcass, he discovered that it had been transformed into a multi-ton buffet for at least seven and possibly many more great white sharks.
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“I’ve never seen anything like it, sharks were circling our boat for the entire eight hours,” Michalove, who has a permit to tag and release white sharks, told For The Win Outdoors. “They were biting the boat, pushing the boat, and biting the motors so much we had to pull the motors out of the water.”
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Michalove added: “I never felt nervous. There were just so many in the area that it was more interesting to observe than to catch.”
When he returned to port he shared a video clip via Instagram showing a large shark biting flesh from the carcass. His description reads, in part:
“Maybe one of the best days I’ve been alive today. So much work went into finding this whale, and the pay off was one I’ll never forget. From 9 a.m. till we left it was one great white shark after another. Part of the time we hooked and tagged, other times we just watched.”
Michalove and his crew tagged two white sharks, a 12-footer and 16-footer, and spent the rest of the time “absorbing the chaos.”
The right whale, nicknamed Cottontail, died after a long and agonizing period of being entangled in commercial fishing gear, despite NOAA Fisheries’ attempts to plot a challenging disentanglement mission.
North Atlantic right whales are critically endangered and Cottontail’s death changed NOAA Fisheries’ Unusual Mortality Event count to 34 dead and 14 seriously injured.
The UME began in 2017 when 17 right whale deaths were recorded in Canada and the U.S. The leading cause of death is “human interaction,” notably fishing gear entanglement and vessel strikes.
Great white sharks typically begin to show off South Carolina in early winter, after the apex predators’ summer and early fall feeding season at seal rookeries off Cape Cod, Mass.