A whale carcass that washed up in Venice, Florida last weekend was towed back into the ocean this week, but the owner of a marine support company captured a video of the shark eating Leviathan after it was towed out to sea.
Capt. Craig Markham, owner of the Seatoe Venice, told Fox News Digital that he rushed to the beach after receiving alerts that the whale had stranded off the coast on Sunday.
“The sea was very rough, 3 to 4 feet deep, and the waves were breaking at the whale on the sandbar,” Markham said.
He said he circled the whale in his boat and made eye contact with the mammal multiple times.
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Capt. Craig Markham, owner of Seatoe Venice, Fla., said the whale was beached for the first time because experts said pulling it back into the ocean alive could be dangerous for the whale and the crew. He said he felt “helpless” at the time. (Seatow Venice)
“Making eye contact with the whale was indescribable,” Makum said. “I felt helpless, because right away a woman named Denise, who is an expert on whale strandings, came to the scene and said it wasn’t a good idea to try to tow this whale away. It would probably break its spine. You might sink your ship, you might lose your life.”
Markham said he had to wait to save the whale, adding that he was not a whale expert and could not say if it was sick, but the mammal was “acting strangely.”
Mr Markham said the water eventually became so rough that the sheriff’s office had to return to land, adding: “Then they came overland, stayed until dark and, of course, by the next morning, the whales… “was passing by,” he said, and was able to leave. After the autopsy was done, he was preparing to have it towed.
A shark eats a dead whale off the coast of Venice, Florida. (Captain Craig Markham/Sea to Venice)
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With assistance from the Sarasota County Sheriff’s Office, Markham and the Seatoe boat towed the dead whale 15 miles off the Gulf Coast at the next high tide on Tuesday. The next day they visited the carcass to ensure that no one had tampered with it and that it had not returned to shore. That’s when Markham saw “multiple tiger sharks feeding on the carcass.”
Mr Markham said his company had partnered with the Moat Marine Laboratory, which conducted the beach drift incident and the autopsy, adding: “We were impressed by their professionalism and respect for the whales.”
Watching their team perform the autopsy was “like watching a master surgeon at work,” Markham said. “I was kind of blown away by how skilled they were and how they knew exactly what to do every step of the way.”
Officials said the whale ran aground on a sandbar about 50 meters from shore. (Venice City Government)
Gretchen Lovewell of the Mote Ocean Institute said: fox 13: “It’s gut-wrenching. We love animals with all our hearts, so something like this happens, but human safety has to come first, and in waves like the one we experienced yesterday.” When you see an animal this big writhing around, it’s a big deal.”
Markham told FOX 13 that returning the whale to the ocean was the “best possible” outcome given the circumstances surrounding the whale’s death.
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“They could have dismembered the whale and taken it to a landfill, which would have been a big problem,” he said. “We know we could have buried it on shore again, which would be a bit of a waste, but we could have carried it offshore to complete the cycle of life and create tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of lives. Thousands, perhaps millions, of other creatures reassured us that it was happening. ”
