Woman stumbles upon headless shark while walking dog on NC beach, photo shows
A woman with a routine of walking her dog along the beach stumbled across a big surprise on the sand.
It was a shark roughly 4 to 5 feet long — and it was missing its head, a picture from the encounter shows.
Mary Held said she took the photo on Tuesday morning while in North Topsail Beach, a vacation town northeast of Wilmington.
“When I walked on the beach, I thought: ‘Oh my gosh, that looks like a shark,’” Held told McClatchy News. “As I walked closer to it, the head was cut off.”
Held, who splits her time between Ohio and North Topsail Beach, posted her photo on Facebook, prompting some people to wonder if it was the same shark that was spotted one day earlier with its head still attached.
Photos from Monday show a shark that reportedly washed onto the coast in North Topsail Beach. The animal was found with its mouth wide open, allowing beachgoers to see all its signature teeth, according to posts on the Topsail Online Gazette and other Facebook pages.
“Oh no that’s scary,” one commenter wrote.
“Was just down there Saturday for a wedding, thankfully the shark wasn’t part of the backdrop,” another person commented on North Carolina’s Weather Authority page.
While some people speculated that the intact shark was different from the one that was missing its head, others feared part of the animal’s body went missing in a matter of hours.
“This is sad because if this is the same shark as featured yesterday afternoon....then who cut off his head? I mean really,” one person commented on Held’s post.
“There are buzzards that patrol the beach for dead birds fish etc,” another Facebook user wrote. “Looks like they started on this guy.”
It’s not the first time an animal was found on the North Carolina shore with part of its body missing.
In September, photos showed a dead sand tiger shark that may have lost its tail from an encounter with a boat or another shark, McClatchy News reported.
About 50 species of sharks live in the waters off North Carolina. The four types most commonly caught by fishermen in the state include: Atlantic sharpnose, blacktip shark, shortfin mako and smooth dogfish, according to the N.C. Department of Environmental Quality.
This story was originally published April 20, 2021 at 11:23 AM with the headline "Woman stumbles upon headless shark while walking dog on NC beach, photo shows."
