Tuesday, 21 January 2020

A Megalodon off Malta?



The Malta Megalodon?
There have been stories of a giant shark ,possibly a megalodon(ancient prehistoric giant shark) being seen near the island of  Malta for years and years .
The last time it was reported was 1956 when it was claimed it killed and ate a man. On the 20th July 1956, Tony Grech, a student, and Jack Smedley, his 40-year-old teacher from the Naval Technical School in Valletta, were out swimming near St Thomas Bay.The student saw a huge black shape beneath him and swam to shore in fright only to turn and see his teacher dragged down beneath the waves, by a monster sharklarge enough to split a fishing vessel in two.
The shark hunt went on for weeks without success and the local Maltese kept out of the sea that summer.No remains of the teacher were found.
A megalodon is unlikely to have survived all these thousands of years but there are some very large great white sharks out there that could be mistaken in the water for something even bigger. There were those who said the teacher was a retired spy and a  soviet submarine killed him.
There are also the sea serpents said to live in a huge underground cavern in the valley of Harq Hammiem near St George’s Bay. Could a sea serpent be responsible?The place is called Dragonara,place of huge sea serpents. Harq Hammiem Cave is a fully submerged terrestrial cavern. It has two chambers on different levels, with an interconnecting narrow corridor leading from the upper chamber to a fully submerged lower chamber.. The water inside the cave turns brackish with depth and has seawater characteristics at deeper levels. The cave is inhabited by the rare albino shrimp.
Fossils of Basilosaurus, an ancient Whale have  been found in Malta, which may account for the sea serpent stories.The ancient whale being long and serpentine.

So was the teacher killed and eaten by a Megalodon or a great white shark,or a sea serpent or was he taken out by a Soviet vessel? You decide.A mystery that cannot be solved without any remains to identify the predator.

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