A St. Vincent’s man stumbled upon an unexpected visitor over the weekend. These pictures are of a dead Thresher Shark, which washed upon St. Stephen’s beach in St. Vincent’s, a small town about 140 kilometres from St. John’s. This shark is estimated to be about 15 feet in length.
The Thresher Shark is not unfamiliar to our waters. Its northernmost range in the western Atlantic is eastern Newfoundland and it ranges all the way down the Atlantic to the West Indies and Northern South America.
The Thresher Shark is a summer visitor to the Canadian Atlantic region. The species ranges from 10 to 18 feet long – with the largest recorded at 20 feet. The maximum lifespan is about 45 to 50 years.