Scientist under fire for photo with dead great white shark at beach
APTOS >> Concerned the ocean would reclaim the very dead and very heavy juvenile great white shark before it could be carted off to a research lab, one marine biologist laid down next to the fearsome fish while another snapped a picture to document its size.
The photo, taken at Beer Can Beach in Aptos on Sunday, was posted on the Facebook page of Salinas-based TV station KSBW, where it received a number of negative comments.
“This was once a living being and it’s just OK to lay next to it smiling?” one person wrote. “This is appalling … justice needs to be had.”
“This could not be more messed up,” wrote another.
The marine biologist who captured the moment, Giancarlo Thomae, defended his colleague in a phone interview Monday. He knew how tall she was and had her lie next to the shark for scale.
“We didn’t know if this animal would be lost to the tide,” Thomae said. “That was the reason why we did it.”
But Thomae said he understood why some people found the picture deeply upsetting.
“People are really opinionated especially with such a majestic creature washing up dead,” he said. “As a marine biologist and a fellow nature lover, I admire the fact that people are sad and concerned about the animals.”
Eventually, help arrived to transport the shark to the UC Santa Cruz-affiliated Joseph M. Long Marine Laboratory, where a necropsy was scheduled to take place Tuesday.
Thomae, who also works as a captain for Moss Landing-based Sanctuary Cruises Whale Watching, has been studying great whites for the past four years. He said the shark, which measured 8 feet 9 inches long and weighed about 500 pounds, was “very fat and healthy.”
“Whatever killed the shark killed it quickly,” he said.
The great white had fresh puncture wounds and scars from feeding on sea lions and even had sea lion fur in its jaws, but Thomae said he doubted the predator was killed by its prey.
Instead, the great white likely died from a bacterial infection, he said.
“There have been strains of bacteria that affect brain functions of sharks, and many shark deaths have been blamed on Carnobacterium infections in previous years,” said Thomae in a news release, adding that the bacteria are nearly harmless to humans.
The carcass also presents a unique opportunity for researchers, Thomae said. To his knowledge, the great white is only the second to wash up on area beaches in the past couple of years.
“The only way you can research them is by either tagging them or by studying a dead one,” he said.
Despite the negative reaction to the photo, Thomae said he wouldn’t think twice about taking another one if faced with a similar set of circumstances.
“As a scientist and marine biologist,” he said, “I’m going to do whatever needs to be done to get the job done.”