Shark fears off British coast as half eaten SEAL washes up on Great Yarmouth beach
Couple make chilling discovery during walk yesterday afternoon
A MONSTER man-eating Great White Shark is feared to be prowling off the British coast close to favourite holiday beaches.
The scare follows the horrifying discovery of a half-eaten 4ft long seal lying on the beach at Great Yarmouth, Norfolk, yesterday afternoon.
Huge teeth marks had been gouged in the seal’s flesh where something lurking in the deep had ripped into it.
Lauren Gillies, 25, and her partner Matty Burgess, 29, were strolling arm-in-arm just after lunch when they spotted what they initially thought was a baby seal in need of rescuing.
Lauren, from Great Yarmouth, said “Initially my reaction was ‘Oh my God a baby seal I need to help it back in the sea’.
“And then as I got closer I realised it was chewed in half and it freaked me out.
“We were stunned, honestly we just couldn’t make out what had eaten it. It was totally baffling and gruesome.
“We do often go beach walking but we’ve never come across this before.”
The resort is one of a number of popular holiday seaside towns along the Lincolnshire, Norfolk and Suffolk coasts including Cromer, Cleethorpes and the luvvies paradise of Southwold, popular with household names like Twiggy, Dame Judi Dench, Michael Palin and Chris Evans.
The beaches, packed with thousands of holidaymakers every summer, face out onto the North Sea…an ideal hunting ground for a Great White because it is packed with prey fish like cod.
And yesterday’s gruesome find is the latest in a string of mysteriously-munched bodies washed up on North Sea beaches in recent year.
In May last year a 5ft long half-eaten porpoise was found lying on a beach in May last year just along the coast at Happisburg, Norfolk.
And in 2011 three porpoises with Jaws bite marks in their flesh were washed up.
Yarmouth resident Stephen McHugh, 23, said “It’s pretty frightening – it can’t be a coincidence that something out there keeps attacking and eating seals and porpoises.
“If it is a Great White or a killer whale, let’s hope it doesn’t come into the warmer shallow water close to the shore when people are on the beaches in the summer.”
At first terrified beachcombers even thought it was a shark and panic-stricken messages were posted on social media.
The mutilated corpse was quickly identified as a harmless harbour porpoise, but fears quickly grew that it had been attacked by a hungry Great White lurking in shallow water along the coast.
Some web users say the snap shows another surfer rather.
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