Rare video shows “well fed” great white shark eating humpback whale off Rhode Island

A “well fed” great white shark was videotaped eating the carcass of a humpback whale in rare footage, recently captured off the coast of Rhode Island. 

The Atlantic Shark Institute, a Rhode Island-based nonprofit organization that shared the video, said its executive director, Jon Dodd, was able to record the underwater encounter “in what just might be a first in RI waters.” Dodd and Sarah Callan, the animal rescue manager at Connecticut’s Mystic Aquarium, had spent several hours searching almost 50 square miles of ocean when they discovered the dead whale, according to the nonprofit.

It was floating in waters just miles from Block Island, offering Callan an opportunity to retrieve samples of the giant marine creature, spanning about 40 feet long, which she could then use for research. Serendipitously, the great white shark was there, too, feeding on the humpback. 

Measuring about 8 feet long itself, the nonprofit said the shark “was healthy, well fed, and had the whale to itself while we visited!”

The whale eventually washed ashore on Block Island’s Crescent Beach, where it was found days later. By then, the nonprofit said, it was covered with “countless shark bites.”

Great white sharks are found worldwide in temperature or tropical waters, according to the Atlantic Shark Institute, but the organization also said sightings of them tend to be “few and far between until a whale dies,” at which point “they seem to appear out of nowhere.”

At least one other great white shark was seen feeding on a whale carcass off the coast of Block Island in recent weeks, CBS affiliate WPRI reported. Whether it was the same whale attracting multiple sharks sharks as it floated through the open ocean wasn’t clear.