Fishermen film shark attacking dead dolphin seven miles off Atlantic City
(AP Photo, file)
Two fishermen witnessed a 12-foot shark devour a dead bottle-nose dolphin just seven miles off Atlantic City Tuesday afternoon, NBC40 reports.
Anthony Cortes and David Hermann both said that they have never witnessed such an event, with Hermann telling the television station that he had fished that area “hundreds of times” and that the sight “was amazing.”
Cortes described to NBC40: “As we were drifting along fishing, we happened to see a 2-foot fin sticking up out of the water and we went over to the fish to inspect it and we got to see a spectacular image of a shark chewing apart a bottle-nose dolphin.”
Hermann continued, “It was going around in a circle and then it would attack it and then it would go around in another circle and then attack it like that.”
Nineteen bottle-nose dolphins have washed ashore at New Jersey beaches in the last 19 days, and marine experts are investigating.
Marine Mammal Stranding Center Director Bob Schoelkopf told NBC40 that dolphins commonly become caught in fishing lines at the Great Egg Harbor Reef, which attracts sharks. Officials could not identify the shark in the fishermen’s video.
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