According to email’s currently bouncing around inboxes throughout South Africa, this monster Great White Shark pictured above was discovered washed up dead on the point at Mossel Bay on Friday afternoon.

Zag quickly got to the bottom of the story and found out the real deal: according to Albert Phillipson from Waves Surf Shop in Mossel Bay, there was no shark reported washed up on the Point over the weekend. Although, he mentioned that a film crew were filming the dissection of a shark near the point. We soon discovered that the shark pictured is actually the same shark Zigzag ran online a few months which was washed up near Zinkwazi beach on the KZN-Natal North Coast.

So how did the Shark wind up on the Point in Mossel Bay? According to Geremy Cliff, who heads up research at the Natal Sharks Board, this 4.5-meter specimen which weighed around 900 kilograms was shipped to the Southern Cape for dissection that would run in a National Geographic series called ‘Inside Natures Giants’, being filmed in Mossel Bay.
 
As Great White Shark’s are protected along the SA coastline, a specimen found dead of this size was quite a novelty. The occasion drew scientists from around the world who were on hand to witness the analysis. When asked if anything unusual was found inside the belly of the giant Geremy laughed; ‘No not this time I am afraid.’ Apparently the stomach had been expelled by the Shark before it was discovered.
 
One interesting point Geremy mentioned is that although this was an ‘ordinary’ sized Great White one of the livers itself weighed 170 kilograms. Now that is about half the size of the Springbok front row.

http://www.zigzag.co.za/news/enviro/436/%5C'Monster-of-Mossels%5C'-Great-White-Shark-Hoax