A shark lingering in a waterway at Busan North Port's waterfront park may have swum in while chasing prey, a marine expert said.
Choi Yoon, a professor of marine biology and resource sciences at Kunsan National University and a shark specialist, said in an interview with CBS Radio's "Park Sung-tae's News Show" on the 22nd that the shark "appears to have followed its prey into the waterway while hunting." He added that such cases "can happen frequently overseas."
Fisheries authorities identified the animal as a tawny nurse shark. "Tawny nurse sharks are very common along Korea's southern coast and around Jeju Special Self-Governing Province," Choi said. "They live mainly around Jeju, but as waters warm and climate change progresses, this one moved north as far as Busan."
Choi noted that of 949 shark attacks on humans reported worldwide, only two involved tawny nurse sharks or bull sharks. "Only a few species, such as great white sharks, attack without being provoked first," he said. "But a shark can attack if it is agitated, so people should be careful about approaching it."
Earlier, an account spread on social media that a passerby had been stopped while trying to throw a raw chicken to the shark. "In the wild, this shark eats fish, not meat," Choi said. "It won't eat what you throw at it, and it could actually agitate the shark, so it's better to refrain."
He was also skeptical about feeding the shark fish such as sardines. "In conditions like these, it won't eat anything dead," Choi said. "It might gradually start eating that sort of thing if it gets hungry later, but the situation now isn't one where there is so little food in there that it would go hungry. There is food available even under natural conditions right now."
Choi said a smaller animal spotted alongside the shark deeper in the waterway is unlikely to be its pup. "Sharks give birth to 10 to 20 pups at once," he said. "The fact that only one small one is swimming around now — at a glance it does look like a shark to me, but I don't think it is a pup born to this shark."
The shark, nicknamed "Bukangi" by residents, was first spotted at about 8:57 a.m. on the 18th of this month. A passerby reported the sighting, and the Busan Coast Guard took the report. Authorities initially tried to drive the shark out of the waterway but later shifted to waiting for it to leave on its own.
Visitors have continued streaming into the North Port waterfront park to see Bukangi. On the 19th and 20th, the park drew about 8,800 and 10,000 visitors respectively, four to five times the usual weekend turnout.
