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A climactic chapter in the saga of Junior, an scraped enthusiastic albescent shark whose gruesome represent grazed off a firestorm of accusations among shark enthusiasts and site commenters on shark blogs in past months, has become to a close thanks to a recording free for the prototypal instance this week.

An ikon of Junior with a opened wound beside his representative surfaced a few months ago, dispatched by a occult nameless source.

Some blamed the shark's trauma on the investigate techniques of Michael Domeier, a marine biologist featured in the National Geographic Channel's popular "Shark Men" series, which chronicles Domeier's getting and release of enthusiastic albescent sharks for satellite-tracking research.

Yet Domeier said the ikon -- a ease from a individual recording condemned a year after Domeier caught and tagged the teen phallic shark in 2009 -- didn't verify the flooded story, insisting the recording itself shows Junior was the individual of a brutal shark attack.

Until now, the recording has been unavailable to anyone, including Domeier. This week, the recording was free online, revealing Junior's nous and torso covered with bite marks.

First look

The recording was prototypal posted on the marine power blog SouthernFriedScience.com, and is today also posted on the Gulf of the Farallones National Marine Sanctuary (GFNMS) website, the hospital that holds the exclusive famous double of the video. [Image Gallery: Great White Sharks]

David Shiffman, a shark scientist and marine aggregation grad enrollee who writes the shark country on SouthernFriedScience, obtained the recording finished a Freedom of Information Act request.

"I rattling didn't undergo what I due to find," Shiffman said. "There had been people locution that this trauma is definitely because of the hook."

When Junior was caught, the shark was hooked in the throat -- which is unusual, and was an accident, Domeier says. Shark researchers, Domeier included, essay to offer the fishes in the mouth.

The crew managed to revilement off part of the offer by achievement finished the shark's gills, but a portion of it was left inside the shark's throat. When the horrible ikon of Junior prefabricated the rounds, some said Domeier's offer was responsible.

Shark star

Despite the fact that whatever questions remain about the coverall training of tagging enthusiastic albescent sharks, the recording appears to place the discussion over Junior to rest.

Shiffman said watching it was something of a surprise.

"I due to wager a blurry recording where you couldn't rattling wager anything," Shiffman said. "When you countenance at the flooded recording and not that ikon it understandably shows that the injuries on the shark are from added sharks and not from his getting method."

Domeier, reached via email, said he was gratified that the recording of Junior has finally become to light.

"I'm pleased the public can today wager the entire video, since it validates my example evidence that Junior was attacked by added albescent shark," Domeier wrote.

"The images that were originally free to the media were designedly dishonorable in an endeavor to dishonour the essential investigate that I am conducting."

Shark lovers anonymous

So who dispatched that represent around -- and why? Although it's famous the recording was condemned by shark researchers, it's not country who dispatched around the damning inclose of Junior -- which doesn't expose the flooded extent of the shark's injuries.

The identity of the nameless band relic an unresolved mystery.

In the telecommunicate dispatched to shark blogs accompanying the realistic ikon of Junior, someone identified exclusive as a "shark enthusiast" wrote, "My anxiety is that added scientists or media hounds module essay to do this again, heck, who knows how some of these sharks hit already been severely impaired as a termination of this aforementioned researcher's prefabricated for TV science…I am very upset over the lack of fault these researchers hit when working with these magnificent creatures."

Shiffman said it's not country who dispatched the represent or why.

Others are not so speculative.

"This is a malicious campaign by competing researchers," said Mike Neumann, a shark adventurer supported in state who writes for the shark blog fijisharkdiving.blogspot.com.

Neumann wrote in an telecommunicate to LiveScience that, in constituent to a "food fisticuffs for scarce investigate dollars," territorialism, favoritism and politics are at work.

However, every of the digit pointing is indeed speculation, and some seem relieved that though the occult band behindhand the hullabaloo has not been unmasked, the answer to what happened to Junior is at small a little clearer.

"There are a lot of emotions going around here, " Shiffman said. "I conceive the most essential thing is the goodness of the shark and of the species as a whole, and we undergo from satellite tags that Junior is ease alive and is ease swimming."

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Reach Andrea Mustain at @AndreaMustain.

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