A great white shark the size of a Vanagon was off of Oceanside on Monday morning. But don’t worry, it was full — the gargantuan female had been gorging itself for nearly a day on the remains of a bloated humpback whale.
Shark taggers dropped in on the fish’s pig-out and snapped that video, noting that she looked like a drunken linebacker at a late night buffet. “Big Female White Shark Tearing Chunks Off Scarlett The Whale Over 18 Hours. She Ate So Much She Was Swimming Around Upside-down Aimlessly like She Was Intoxicated,” wrote Keith Poe, who runs Sharktagger.com.
The 20-year-old, 55-foot humpback whale has been adrift off of SoCal for the last four days. Over the weekend, lifeguards in Newport Beach towed it out to sea after it drifted too close to shore. And on Monday, Oceanside lifeguards did the same.
Whale watchers are bummed to lose “Scarlet,” a whale who has been tracked up to Oregon and back for two decades. Last year, she earned the name Scarlet when she became entangled in a fishing net and subsequently infested with lice, a condition that turned her sides red.
If Scarlet ends up on the shore, she may have to be cut up and hauled off like the whale that washed ashore at Trestles last year.
