CAIRO: Fishermen netted a young whale shark in Egypt’s Suez Canal on Thursday in a very rare catch of one of the gentle giants in the waterway, an environment ministry official said.
The shark, which measured about five meters (16 feet) and weighed 700 kilograms (1,540 pounds), died in the fishermen’s nets.
They chopped off its fins and tail before fishery officials arrived and buried the rest of the carcass.
"The fishermen dragged it to shore. It didn’t put up a fight, so it must have been sick. They cut off its fins and tail by the time we arrived. We said it should be buried," said fisheries official Souad Al-Ayadi.
The sharks, which grow up to 12 meters in length and can weigh up to 18 tons, feed on plankton and are mostly harmless to humans, although care must be taken around them because of their sheer power.
The shark was caught in the canal’s Great Bitter Lake, which is saltier than the sharks’ usual environment because its bed contains salt deposits.
Elke Bojanowski, a shark expert with the Hurghada Environmental Protection and Conservation association, said whale sharks are abundant in the Red Sea at this time of the year but they avoid the canal.
"This is the time of the year when they move up to Aqaba (in Jordan). This one might have taken a wrong turn," she said. "It could have had trouble adjusting" to the canal’s salinity, she added.
She said the adult sharks often measure between 10 and 12 meters and the shark found in the Suez was a youngster, judging by its description.
Whale sharks have washed up before on Egypt’s Red Sea coast, and snorkellers and divers delight in swimming with the mammoth fish.
But other sharks in the Red Sea have proven dangerous. Last winter, sharks believed to be oceanic white tips mauled five tourists, in one case fatally, just off the beach in the resort town of Sharm El-Sheikh.
