While such beach deposits happen on average around once a year<\/a> in the UK, experts from the Marine Strandings Network have said that basking shark carcasses normally sink.<\/p>\nWhen they do wash up, it offers \u201ca very rare opportunity\u201d for scientists to study them.<\/p>\n
![\"A](\"data:image\/svg+xml,%3Csvg)
A shark, believed to be a young basking shark, has washed up on Portgordon beach. Picture: Peter MacDonald<\/p>\n
The large liver of the basking shark contains a high quantity of oil, making the carcass buoyant for a while before it sinks to the sea or ocean bed.<\/p>\n
Possible causes of a beaching are said to include being trapped in shallow waters when the tide goes out, being injured by a boat strike or entanglement in fishing gear or being old and weak.<\/p>\n
Basking sharks are typically about 24ft in length, making them the second largest type after the whale shark, so the Portgordon find is thought to be a young shark.<\/p>\n
Mr MacDonald, also posting pictures of birdlife near Portgordon Harbour, wrote on social media: \u201cThe Yin and Yang of wildlife at Portgordon today.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe sad sight of a young Basking shark, about 12 ft long, and then over at the harbour birds.\u201d<\/p>\n
The post drew a large number of responses, with many people expressing sadness at the sight of the dead shark.<\/p>\n
Jan Burgess, one of Moray Wildlife\u2019s social media administrators, said: \u201cAmazing to see the shark close up, but very sad.\u201d<\/p>\n
Do you want to respond to this article? If so, click here<\/a> to submit your thoughts and they may be published in print. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A shark measuring around 12 feet has washed up on a popular Moray beach. A shark, believed to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":240019,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[39988,1397,53632,913,90,56,54,55,4407],"class_list":{"0":"post-240018","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-divert-me","9":"tag-environment","10":"tag-fishing-and-marine","11":"tag-latest-news","12":"tag-science","13":"tag-uk","14":"tag-united-kingdom","15":"tag-unitedkingdom","16":"tag-wildlife"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240018","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=240018"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240018\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/240019"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=240018"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=240018"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=240018"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}