Posted on 05/31/2010 5:42:20 PM PDT by nickcarraway
A commercial fisherman said he found a shark in the Ohio River.
The fisherman found the two-foot bull shark already dead on a boat ramp Thursday morning in Olmsted, Ill. It appeared the shark washed up after flood waters receded.
Bull sharks can survive in fresh water and have been known to travel up the Mississippi River from the Gulf of Mexico.
"(It's) pretty much the only species that can get that far up river," said Chris , director of husbandry at the Newport Aquarium.
But Pierson said it's unlikely that this shark swam all the way to Illinois.
"My guess with this shark, it probably didn't swim up there. It was probably left there," Pierson said. As for the potential for attacks, Pierson said you shouldn't worry too much about it.
"Stories of people being attacked by bull sharks in rivers are very unusual," he said. However, "The story that started 'Jaws' happened in 1916. And it was all based on facts of people being attacked by a shark in a river in New Jersey. It probably wasn't a great white shark. It was probably a bull shark."
But Friday afternoon, Tony Gerard, a biology professor at Shawnee Community College, said he physically observed the shark Thursday and said it is a spiny dogfish shark. Gerard told KFVS-TV that it was more likely that a boat worker caught it in the Gulf of Mexico and dumped it in the Ohio River. He said the fin was cut off, which is common in the Gulf where people catch them and cut them off to avoid injury.
Gerard told the station that this is not a freshwater-tolerant shark and if it were alive at some point in the Ohio River, it would be the first time he knows of this type of shark living in the area.
Doing the work catfish won’t do.
That certainly seems to be the case here, but it's true that bull sharks have been found as far north up the Mississippi as Cairo, Illinois, having swum up from the gulf. They've been found up to 4,000 km inland up the Amazon, and are quite tolerant of freshwater. They're not uncommon here (Louisiana) in the brackish to fresh waters of the Atchafalaya basin, and after Katrina, a number were observed in Lake Pontchartrain.
Didn’t Al Gore warn us things like this would happen if we didn’t switch to those squiggly lights?
Oh, my. It's really only about 120 miles to the Arch from there.
I can see the Mississippi from my office. I’ll keep an eye out for dorsal fins.
It just means a female Bull Shark gave birth.
You better be careful. They come to offices pretending to deliver packages.
“Candygram!”
Just last night we watched a re-run of River Monsters and the episode was tracking Bull Sharks in the Breede River in South Africa. They had travelled many miles upstream and there were quite a few of them, one they caught to track was the biggest Bull Shark known. Interesting, not very comforting that they supposedly don’t usually attack people.
Wrong shark..........
Haven’t been in Ohio in about seven years.
It’s about time I wander back.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.