Watch This Shark Beach Itself After Chasing a Fish All the Way Up the Shore

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We’ve all done it! Got carried away with what we were doing and then found ourselves a long way from where we were supposed to be. This hunt for fish nearly ended in disaster for a blue shark that managed to get itself stranded on a beach in Palliser Bay, South Wairarapa, New Zealand. It had been chasing kahawai fish and had misjudged the water depth and tides. As the video at the bottom of this page shows, it needed a little help from human friends to make it back to the deeper water.

The blue shark (Prionace glauca) lives in temperate and tropical oceans although it prefers slightly cooler waters. It normally lives quite near the surface but will dive down to the cooler waters if the surface is too hot. These guys do not normally spend their time near the coast, they prefer to be in open water. Blue sharks are also migratory (including making trans-Atlantic crossings) and use the ocean currents to travel long distances. In terms of size, they reach a maximum of about 10 feet.

Their populations are fairly steady even though many are caught each year both on purpose and by accident. Humans use them to make shark fin soup, leather and fish food.

©Tara Lambourne/Shutterstock.com

Blue sharks are carnivores and are open ocean predators. The video notes claim that the individual shark in this clip had been chasing kahawai when it got stranded. These are Arripis trutta which are found all around New Zealand. They live in large schools and are most often found in coastal waters, in harbors and estuaries and even is salty river waters.

Blue sharks eat several types of fish as well as squid and they sometimes even eat seals. Some individuals have been spotted feeding on whale and porpoise carcasses. Their favorite fish are pelagic fish including herring, white hake, and cod. When humans catch these fish on long lines, they often attract and are eaten by blue sharks. However, the sharks also get ensnared in the fishing gear and this is how many of them die.

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