After the disappearance of a nine-foot great white shark, researchers tracking the animal are now on the hunt for the mysterious Super Predator that supposedly devoured it.
Researchers of the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization had tagged the healthy female shark to track its movements as part of a study - Australia's first-ever large-scale tagging and tracking program for great whites. They were baffled when the tag, minus the shark, washed up on a beach in Australia's Bremer Bay area four months later, Mail Online reported.
Data captured on the device showed there was a rapid temperature rise from 46 degrees to 78 degrees Fahrenheit (8 to 26 degrees Celsius) along with a sudden, sharp 1,902-foot plunge - temperatures drop considerably in deep ocean waters.
This - along with signs of bleaching from stomach acid - suggests that the tag was inside the belly of another animal, and that "Shark Alpha," as the victim was named, was prey to some mysterious Super Predator.
The only theory so far is that a "colossal cannibal great white shark" was responsible, according to the New York Post.
The case is detailed in an upcoming documentary by the Smithsonian Institute, called the "Hunt for the Super Predator," directed by cinematographer Dave Riggs.
"When I was first told about the data that came back from the tag that was on the shark, I was absolutely blown away," Riggs said in the documentary.
"The question that not only came to my mind but everyone's mind who was involved was, 'What did that?' It was obviously eaten. What's gonna eat a shark that big? What could kill a [9-foot] great white?"
Riggs, who, through crowd funding, has been completing expeditions to an area 60 kilometers off the Bremer Bay coast where the shark was tagged, believes that a large shark of the mackerel species most likely ate the shark.
"But by the same token, I'm not 100 per cent convinced," he told Mail Online.
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