A hammerhead shark recently crashed down on Splinter City Disc Golf Course in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. While waterspouts can pull fish from the sea and drop them over land, the culprit was a more common fish foe: an osprey (Pandion haliaetus) that had lost its lunch.
The unusual event took place on May 18 near the 11th hole of the wooded course near the ocean.
“It’s not uncommon to see an osprey carrying something, but you take note because it’s still really cool to see,” Jonathan Marlowe, who witnessed the hammerhead fall as he was playing disc golf, told Garden & Gun magazine. “I thought it would be a random fish.”
Instead, it was a small, dead hammerhead shark, easily identifiable by its wide, mallet-shaped cranial structure known as a cephalofoil.
Also known as “fish hawks,” ospreys are excellent aquatic hunters and the only raptors with feet designed to catch slippery prey. But they tend to feed on fish less than 12 inches (30 centimeters) long, and the hammerhead found on the golf course appears to be longer than a foot.
Related: Sharks: Facts about some of the ocean’s top predators
It’s likely the osprey carried the fish at least half a mile (800 meters) from the ocean before losing its grip. Marlowe said two crows chased the osprey into a tree, where it dropped the hammerhead onto the ground below. Crows and other smaller birds are known to use a technique called mobbing to protect their territories during breeding season by teaming up to ward off predators.
According to posts on the Myrtle Beach Disc Golf Facebook page, wildlife such as snakes, raccoons, and alligators are common sights on local courses. But seeing a shark in the woods might just be a once-in-a-lifetime experience.
“We couldn’t believe it and kept asking ourselves, ‘did that really just happen?'” Marlowe said, who left the hammerhead behind in the hopes that the raptor might return and make a meal out of it.
Worldwide, there are 10 known species of hammerhead shark, and several populate the Atlantic Ocean along the coast of the southern United States.
A survey by the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources that ran from 2013 to 2016 detected three types of hammerheads — bonnethead (Sphyrna tiburo), scalloped hammerhead (Sphyrna lewini), and great hammerhead (Sphyrna mokarran) — in coastal waters off South Carolina and Georgia. And in 2013, a new, rare species was discovered in the same area. Named the Carolina hammerhead (Sphyrna gilbert), the fish look a lot like scalloped hammerheads but are genetically different. It is unclear which of these species fell from the sky in Myrtle Beach.
