Dozens of dead sharks found on beach in Queensland, Australia
Kirby Spencer
Mon, 04 Dec 2017 14:06 UTC
Dozens of dead sharks have washed up on a North Queensland beach, with mystery surrounding how the animals died
Dozens of dead sharks have washed up on a North Queensland beach, with mystery surrounding how the animals died.
Concerned resident Lance Payne made the grisly discovery last month while scouring Louisa Creek Beach, south of Mackay.
The 54-year-old said he found an 'alarming number' of carcasses during his first visit, with at least eight more, including juveniles, unearthed on Sunday.
Mr Payne first first came across the dead beasts in early November, while searching the beach for coal.
Taking to Facebook, he stated that there appeared to be only one species that had washed up on the shore.
'The sharks seamed in quite good health with no evident cause of death (and) the corpses had not been predated on by other fish,' he wrote.
Two weeks later he returned to the beach and found more carcasses, which included a 'mixed bag of species and even some poor hammer heads'.
'I was so disappointed to see it killed at such a young age,' Mr Payne told Yahoo 7.
His initial suspicious were that the sharks had been killed to be used in the Chinese delicacy shark fin soup.
However, other theories Mr Payne suggested included them running into fishing nets, as well as a lack of oxygen in the water due to a nearby coal mining facility.
Daily Mail Australia has contacted Queensland Fisheries for comment.
His initial suspicious were that the sharks had been killed to be used in the Chinese delicacy shark fin soup