The first great white shark was found in August 2023 on the beach of a national park on Prince Edward Island, Canada. A young man, 500 pounds, 8 feet 9 inches from nose to tail. The park workers arrived with a pickup truck immediately, loaded the corpse, and drove a cool state at the Atlantic Veterinary University of Prince Edward University. Apart from some abrasions acquired on the way, sharks did not show any signs of injury.
Dr. Megan Jones, a college veterinary physician and a regional director of the Canadian Wild Biological Health Cooperative, or Dr. Megan Jones, a regional director of CWHC, began necrosis early the next morning, but his body was “really fresh. “She said. “Through the microscope of the organization, they are very well preserved.”
CWHC, a network belonging to a Canadian veterinary school, is studying wildlife health problems. But 30 years later, the group had never come across a large white, and it was not clear how it died. The hunger was excluded from the first incision when a 76 -pound liver of the sharks spilled into the inspection table, which stores fat. Other organs did not show signs of trauma. Later, only after a microscopy, the cause of death was revealed. Brain encephalitis, inflammation of brain tissue.
At first, Dr. Jones felt that the diagnosis was more interesting than surprising. After that, other sharks came. In the next few months, CWHC has received the entire animal or tissue sample from four other white sharks on the beach in eastern Canada. “Three of these five seem to have the same potential infectious disease as the brain,” said Dr. Jones. “I need to know more about what it is.”
These five white sharks are one of the nine known deaths from sharks found in Massachusetts on July 4, 2022. Most of them had brain inflammation. Such inflammation is seen in other shark seeds, but it was clear, unlike white sharks, such as bacterial infections. Dr. Jones is part of a small group of US and Canadian scientists, which is currently trying to release the mystery, and has determined whether white sharks are facing a wider threat.
“I feel very strong when something important is happening,” said Alisa, the chief veterinarian of Oceach, a research organization based in Florida, a popular app that monitors the movement of sharks. Dr. Newton said. However, Dr. Newton's alarm has been relieved by the fact that the basic occurrence of sharks along the Atlantic coast is almost unknown.
As a research target, the sharks in the western part of the North Atlantic Ocean, from southern Florida, are not as understood as white sharks in other areas, and are far more understood than marine mammals such as whales and dolphins. yeah. Shark science is relatively short of funding, and there are few protocols that connect local officials with scientists when white sharks are on the beach on the east coast of North America. As a result, information including tissue samples tends to move slowly.
Dr. Newton was the first scientist to observe white shark meningcalitis on the Atlantic coast in 2022. She found it in a brain tissue sample received in a lab in Jackson Building, Florida. Long Island, New York, July 20, that year.
She also discovered that she was swollen in the shark brain discovered on July 4, 2022, but the organization sample did not reach her lab until early 2023, but 2023. It was collected in South Carolina in April year. It is evaluated for the possibility of meningcaeic encephalitis. She thinks that there may be more samples collected by wildlife officials in a state of wildlife who do not know that they prefer a part of their brain, sitting on a shelf in a formalin bottle. Masu.
The white shark brain is larger depending on the fish standard, but is much smaller than the dolphin brain. They are smooth on the surface, knobby, and keeps almost three ping -pong ball size and shape.
Stopitis is an inflammation of the brain and surrounding tissue, a fundamental problem. The brain is squeezed and the normal function is destroyed because there is no place where the swollen tissue enters the hard skull. In a shark, Dr. Jones said that it may not be possible to feed, or it is swimming and loses its balance, stuck with shallow water, and when the tide disappears, it becomes a beach. However, given the lack of knowledge, it may be normal to live with a certain amount of white sharks with some swelling of the brain.
“We know a lot of animals living with parasites and bacteria, but they are good, they are all right, they always have a natural load,” an animal was found on the beach in the eastern Canada. An organization called at the time. “You should be able to see the lungs of the harbor rat. These are really troublesome worms, but it's natural for them.”
The organization performed nectarops with three of the five beaches. This was unable to move to the lab and had to dissect on the sand that was immediately immersed in the sand. The group has also recruited a diving team to recover the latest victims. It was found in a corpse in 30 feet water near Halifax in November 2023. (During the time in the water, CWHC deteriorated the brain tissue to diagnose swelling.)
Wimer said that one boy was ate just before dying, but had a “big porpoise lump” in his stomach, including flipper and part of his head. And it did not show signs of meningititis under a microscope. Another white sharks died in October 2023, swimming irregularly around the port, hitting the beach, look like a clear brain inflammation case. But the test did not show anything again.
To promote the investigation, Dr. Newton has submitted a brain tissue to the Washington Animal Disease Diagnosis Research Institute for genetic sequences from South Carolina sharks. This procedure is a catalog of all DNAs in the tissue to see if there is evidence of another creature such as viruses and bacteria inside a shark, which can cause mening encephalitis. The sequence has not been completed yet and keeps the mystery open.
Wimer is optimistic that the wave of the death of “confusion” may be a positive sign. This is the natural result of the animal population listed as the extinction Species species in Canada. There may be more white sharks on the beach just because there are more white sharks in the water.
