Great White Shark Chokes To Death On Giant Sea Turtle [Photos]

The body of a 4,500-pound white shark was retrieved off the coast of Japan, which appeared to have died after choking on a sea turtle.

Pictures of the mammoth creature were shared by Osaka-based fisherman Greg Vella on the Facebook page Commercial Salmon, Albacore & Crab Fishers on April 19. The photos showed the dead predator with half of a giant sea turtle trapped inside its jaws, which were covered in blood.

“I was out commercial ‘kenken’ style [a type of fishing boat] fishing for tuna [Japan, Pacific Ocean side] when I heard chatter on the radio that there was a white shark swimming around with a big sea turtle in is [sic] mouth… Then next day, it was found dead, near the bait receivers, tangled in some netting,” Vella wrote in the caption.

Vella said when the locals learned about a white shark with a turtle stuck between its jaws, they started to joke about it. However, commercial fishermen were not so thrilled about the news. “The commercial guys were bummed, as white sharks do not bother their commercial fishing, and most certainly do bother the things that eat our catch,” he said.

Fishermen who had witnessed the shark’s ordeal when it was still alive told Vella that it was trying in vain to dislodge the turtle from its mouth after it realized it could not swallow the reptile.

Vella also elaborated on the type of boat that was used for retrieving the shark. “These boats are typically 10 to 50 gross tons. Most of them have slammers that can hold up to fifty scoops of bait, and have racks and water sprayers up on the bow if they choose to fish the squid pole or bait pole,” he said.

The photos soon went viral after the fisherman posted them, garnering over 7,000 reactions and they were shared more than 9,000 times.

“My phone was blowing up with notifications and over one hundred friend requests - which I deleted. Except for the online hookers. Kept those, just in case,” Vella wrote in the comments section of his post.

Earlier this month, Oliver Jewell of Murdoch University, Australia, and his colleagues enticed eight great white sharks to their boat, off the coast of South Africa, using chum and a seal decoy and attached cameras to their fins. The cameras remained on the predators’ bodies for a few hours before they detached and floated up to the surface of the ocean. Retrieved data from the cameras let researchers learn about their hunting patterns.

“People think sharks are mindless killing machines,” Jewell said, adding that the notion was not correct, the New York Times reported. “They’re very calm and they’re also curious animals, and they’re just there doing their own thing.”