Shark and stormy! Bull shark washed up on Australian road after cyclone
After a tropical storm hit their town, locals might have expected to be clearing the roads of debris from battered trees and buildings.
They certainly wouldn’t have expected to come face to face with a shark. But this is what greeted emergency services as they assessed the damage caused by tropical cyclone Debbie around the town of Ayr, in northeast Australia.
Queensland Fire and Emergency Services (QFES) shared photos of the dead bull shark on social media, warning members of the public to stay out of flood water near the Burdekin River just in case any of its relatives were lurking.
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“Think it’s safe to go back in the water? Think again!” QFES posted.
“You never know what lurks beneath the surface during a severe storm and what will wash up in the aftermath.
“Just ask emergency services who came across this bull during inspections around Ayr, where floodwaters are receding in some parts. #TCDebbie #ifitsfloodedforgetit.”
Philip Calder, a journalist who was covering the flooding, tweeted: “The only victim of Burdekin flooding…a bull shark.”
“There was only moderate flooding, peaked at nine metres in Burdekin River about an hour before we took the photo,” he told the Brisbane Times.
“The poor guy had obviously been trying to escape the torrent or something like that and had beached himself on the road.
“He was looking pretty clean and wasn’t decomposing, so [it] wasn’t there long.”
He said that some locals took a tooth as a souvenir.
He added: “We were pretty amazed, we were turning up to shoot a flooding road, we weren’t expecting to see wildlife as well.”
Earlier this year, a rare crocodile shark was found for the first time on a UK beach.
