The strange white shark beached itself in New South Wales, Australia. Photo: Luke Anslow/Facebook
New South Wales, Australia, has a lot of sharks. It’s also the center of a very divisive topic of conversation: what to do about all the sharks. I’m not going to weigh in with my opinion–if only because I have many times already–but recently, a very interesting find was made there. Luke Anslow took a few photos of an eerie white shark that beached itself in Port Hacking and posted them to Facebook. “Not something you see everyday [sic],” he wrote. “Albino white.”
According to biologist John Chisholm, the shark is probably a young great white. It is not, however, an albino, as Anslow believed. According to Earth Torch News and Huffington Post Hawaii, “If it were a true albino–a genetic condition characterized by the absence of any coloration or pigmentation–it would be entirely white or a faint yellow, with pink, red or even purple eyes due to the blood vessels.”
Before the shark died, it reportedly flailed in the shallows. It’s not clear exactly why the shark beached itself, but it is an interesting look at just what Mother Nature can produce. The New South Wales Fisheries Department collected the shark for further analysis.
