Scientists find evidence that pregnant shark was eaten by a bigger shark

Researchers tracking pregnant porbeagle sharks uncovered the first evidence of the species getting eaten by an even bigger shark.

Just weeks before a pregnant porbeagle shark was expected to give birth, one of the two tracker tags marine scientists had placed on the animal floated to the surface near Bermuda.

The team hadn’t expected the tag to surface for months. They had attached it to the 7-foot creature just 158 days earlier, after hoisting the shark onto a boat off the coast of Cape Cod, Massachusetts, in October 2020 and giving it an ultrasound. The pop-off tag was designed to stay on for about a year. 

“Something had gone very wrong,” said Brooke Anderson, who worked as a shark researcher at Arizona State University at the time.

A second tag, which was designed to transmit a signal when the shark’s fin broke the sea surface, would never do so again. 

The data from the recovered “pop-off” tag showed a curious pattern. For about five months, the depth and temperature information seemed normal for the species. Then it went haywire. 

https://www.nbcnews.com/science/science-news/pregnant-porbeagle-shark-eaten-bigger-shark-rcna168527

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