\n Shee-Shee Elaine found the small-spotted catshark at around 7.40am on Sunday morning near Boscombe Pier.\n<\/p>\n
\n She said “I was quite alarmed because I’ve never seen anything like that before.\n<\/p>\n
\n “I’ve never seen that sort of fish. It was quite big.”\n<\/p>\n
\n A small-spotted catshark (Scyliorhinus canicula), also known as the sandy dogfish, lesser-spotted dogfish, rough-hound or morgay, are the most common shark in UK waters, growing to around 1 metre in length, and named due to the dark spots and blotches covering its skin.\n<\/p>\n
\n A small-spotted catshark found in Boscombe Beach (Image: Shee-Shee Elaine)\n<\/p>\n
\n Shee-Shee said she did not know what kind of fish it was when she first came across and had to put the photos into Google Lens to identify it.\n<\/p>\n
\n The shark was dead when Shee-Shee found it and she said she would have “made an effort to put it back in the water” if it was still alive.\n<\/p>\n
\n “I’m amazed it was lying there on the beach and the birds hadn’t got to it,” she added.\n<\/p>\n
\n The sharks live close to the seabed in shallow waters down to 100m deep, feeding on crabs, molluscs and other small fish. When threatened, catshark curl up into a donut shape.\n<\/p>\n
\n They are known to wash up dead on beaches in the UK after storms.\n<\/p>\n
\n Small-spotted catshark are smaller and more spotty than the scarcer nursehound (also known as large spotted dogfish or bull huss), and have very rough, pale cream skin, large dark cat-like eyes and a small mouth. Its eggs cases or ‘mermaid’s purses’ are often found washed up onshore.\n<\/p>\n
\n “Sometimes when I go down there (to Boscombe Beach) I see all sorts,” she said.\n<\/p>\n
\n “But, I’ve never come across a shark.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Shee-Shee Elaine found the small-spotted catshark at around 7.40am on Sunday morning near Boscombe Pier. She said “I…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":414933,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[90,56,54,55,4407],"class_list":["post-415266","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-science","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/415266","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=415266"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/415266\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/414933"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=415266"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=415266"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=415266"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}