Jul 14, 2009 7:07 pm US/Eastern
'Harmless' 20-Foot Shark Washes Up On L.I. Beach
Estimated At 2,000 Pounds, Basking Shark Is Second Only To Whale Shark In Size; Jaw-Dropped Beachgoers Stunned
BABYLON, N.Y. (CBS) ―
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A 20-foot-long basking shark washed ashore on a Long Island beach on July 14, 2009.
CBS
It was a sight like many have never seen before.
Talk about a fish out of water.
A 20-foot long shark weighing an estimated ton washed up on the sands of Gilgo Beach on Long Island on Tuesday.
"Jaws"-dropped Beachgoers broke out their cameras to get a rare snapshot.
"I haven't seen a shark in the water around here, but in other places like Hawaii and Puerto Rico," one beachgoer said.
At first, spectators weren't sure what to make of the giant creature.
"I was about to go in the water and I saw this thing laying on the beach. Pretty crazy. I thought it was a great white or something," said surfer Andrew Brooke.
Turns out there's nothing to fear here. This was a basking shark which, though big, is not considered dangerous.
"He's a plankton feeder. You can see inside there's no teeth inside his mouth," said marine biologist Tracy Marcus. "He's a relatively harmless kind of shark, but large."
"It's the second largest fish in the world, second to the whale shark," Marcus said.
Marcus works with the Cornell Cooperative Extension and examined the giant fish.
"I don't see any major scarring, I mean there is a little bit of a boat hit, it looks like, a little bit of rawness near the tail, but nothing that would kill a shark," Marcus said.
"It would have been fun if it was still alive. I could have surfed aside it, maybe caught some waves, and rode its fin, grabbed on. No, but, I thought it was pretty cool that something this big could wash up here," said surfer James McGaley.
Marine experts said while basking sharks are common in the waters off Long Island, it's not common for them to come ashore to die.
Experts will determine the exact cause of death and the shark will be buried in nearby sand dunes.
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