Great White

Images of a dead Great White shark strung up on Mossel Bay beach in South Africa are doing the rounds and dropping into inboxes with the subject line 'MONSTER IN MOSSELBAAI'.

The photos, thought initially to be a hoax, show the 4.3m adolescent female shark being dissected in public after being caught in shark nets controlled by the Natal Sharks Board at the Zinkwasi beach in KwaZulu-Natal.

"Staff from the Sharks Board tried in vain to free her, but she was clearly confused and was found dead in the nets early the next morning," said Geremy Cliff, head of the Natal Sharks Board.

It's grizzly stuff. So are these images being used to draw attention to the inhumane threat shark nets pose to endangered marine life? Do they come attached to a petition demanding the nets be removed from South Africa's coastline?

Nope.

Instead, these photos are being bandied around in a fit of Jaws-like hysteria. One news report about the "monster shark" used the images to shout about an unrelated incident in which an "enormous Great White robbed fishermen of their catch".

Though this "nerve-racking" event had seemingly nothing to do with the Mossel Bay corpse, it was deemed important enough to earn inches of column space. But as for how the Mossel Bay effigy met its own nerve-racking end and came to be hung, drawn and quartered for the world's morbid displeasure - well, that gets a quick mention later on.

Shark nets pose a direct threat to an already endangered species. And sensational journalism is only adding to their plight.