The 10-foot-long female stopped breathing after locals tried several times to coax her back into the water.
The cause of the animal's death remains a mystery.
© ShutterstockGreat white shark strandings are very rare in South Carolina, as these animals are typically only winter visitors.
A
great white shark washed up on South Carolina's Myrtle Beach earlier this month in a
rare and unusual stranding — and the reason behind the beaching remains a mystery.The 10-foot-long (3 meters) female was alive when locals saw it in the shallows on April 3. "There were multiple attempts to get the shark back in the ocean but it kept washing back ashore and eventually stopped breathing," Crystal Alden, a local who participated in the rescue effort, wrote
in a post on Facebook.
In a series of pictures attached to the social media post, the shark appears to be stuck in a shallow pool. Its dorsal fin, eyes and gills are clearly visible, white the rest of its body is submerged. More photos show the shark lying in the back of a pickup truck with scratches to the underside of its mouth and sharp teeth exposed between protruded jaws. In the final picture posted by Alden, the young female hangs from a digger by its tail.
Biologists from the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources (SCDNP) and visiting scientists from Georgia Aquarium and Ripley's Aquariums, in Toronto, Canada, conducted a necropsy on the great white (
Carcharodon carcharias) — but they could not determine the cause of death.
"A necropsy revealed nodules on the shark's spleen but no conclusive cause of illness; our biologists are sending off tissue samples for further analysis to hopefully learn more," SCDNR representatives wrote in a
Facebook post on April 6.
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