No decision yet on future of whale carcass found again off Port Adelaide after being ripped apart by sharks

Authorities are still deciding what to do with a humpback whale carcass that is floating off Port Adelaide.

WARNING: This story contains graphic content that readers may find distressing.

The dead whale’s body was first spotted in the Port River on Sunday but went missing on Monday night.

The National Parks and Wildlife Service SA then spotted it at a place called Section Bank, off the northern end of Torrens Island, between Outer Harbor and St Kilda, late this morning.

Parts of the carcass have broken off after it was attacked by at least two great white sharks, seen in a gruesome video.

Jon Emmett from South Australia’s National Parks and Wildlife Service said a big high tide in the Port River overnight washed it up the river and then back out into Gulf St Vincent.

He said it was not that unusual for ships to hit whales.

“If you see a big container ship — a big international ship these days — they have a big bulbous part to the bow of the ship,” he said.

“If that strikes a whale, sometimes the whale’s body can actually get carried on top of the bulbous part of the bow for hundreds or thousands of kilometres, so we don’t know where this happened.

“The South Australian Museum, who were down there with us [on Monday], said looking at the state of the whale, it’s possibly been dead for over a week.

Similar incident 20 years ago

Mr Emmett said a similar incident happened in 2001, when a ferry to Kangaroo Island hit a southern right whale and killed it.

Sharks then devoured the carcass and people were filmed standing on it.

“Certainly, whales do visit our waters; it’s not often, though, that we get the body of a whale brought in like this on the bow of a ship,” he said.

“Then when the ship stopped in Port Adelaide the whale came off the front of the ship and stayed in the Port River for a while and the sharks followed it in.”

Local resident Mike Sutton saw the whale in 2001 and came twice to the Port River hoping to see the new carcass.

“It was a fascinating thing to see — it’s a one in a lifetime — so it would have been great to see it again,” he said.

The whales spotted at Christies Beach in June were southern right whales, not humpbacks. 

Research opportunity for scientists

Flinders University ecologist Lauren Meyer researches what animals eat in the environment.

She and other scientists headed out on a boat to get a sample of skin and muscle from the shark using a specially-designed biopsy tip.

“We’ll be able to take some samples from these white sharks and from that we can look at what the sharks have been eating as well as what habitats they use and how closely they are related to other white sharks in the area,” Dr Meyer said.

From this, she could work out what the population of great white sharks was in South Australia.

“We’re thrilled to go out and hopefully get some research done.”