I don’t know, Eric. A large shark such as a tiger or white would be powerful enough to bite and cleanly separate this animal’s head. Remember, sharks don’t bite and pull like us humans; they bite, shake and serrate. Even the bite by the dorsal fin looks like a shark’s bite. If a human were to cut the head off with a knife I don’t think the cut wouldn’t be as clean. (How close is San Diego to Japan??!!) But why the head? Perhaps the animal was already dead and was scavenged by a shark?

funny thing is..i was in hawaii recently and came across a dead moray eel…except it was missing the body and the head looked like it was cleanly cut off. either someone did it or there’s something in the ocean that was mad at this moray eel. haha….

Christopher — I’ve seen shots of turtles and manta rays with large parts of their bodies removed, and have seen a white shark take clean semi-circular chunks off of a surfboard. Some of them have looked pretty clean. This cut is *really* clean, though. Who knows…

I once found a dolphin in bad condition that I thought was still alive so I called the bay area marine mammal rescue and they took forever to come but eventually they did and I left to return the next day to find the carcass still on the beach with its head sliced like shown in your pictures. I called them back and said what the hell! They said that there was nothing they could do. They call the local marine lab. In Monterey County it’s the marine lab at moss landing I believe and they come to slice the head off to get the most scientific info on diet etc from the teeth, brain etc and poke holes in other places of the body to get blubber samples. Sometimes they bury the carcass, sometimes they leave it and sometimes they roll it back into the ocean. I’m surprised scripts didn’t know.

Rimas – now that you mention it, all the holes in the body look too regular to have been inflicted by a non-human. I’ll bet a marine lab already came to take the head and samples, and left the carcass to rot.