The shark, a young adult porbeagle that weighed around 200 pounds, washed up in the area of Mills Avenue and Archer Avenue around 10:45 a.m. when the tide came in. It had also been spotted in the water belly-up several times Wednesday and Thursday, Hurley said.

That’s why hundreds stopped by the scene Friday morning after the fish washed ashore, Revere assistant harbormaster John Hurley said.

Here’s something you probably don’t expect to see on your morning walk on Revere Beach: the body of a 6 ½-foot-long shark, looking like a prop straight out of a “Sharknado” movie.

There were no visible wounds on the shark to indicate how it died, Hurley said. He speculated it could have suffocated after getting stranded on shore.


Based on the Thursday sightings of the shark and the relatively good condition its body was in, Hurley said the shark likely died very recently.

“It looks like he suffocated himself,” he said. “He very well could have died on the beach this morning.”

Greg Skomal, a state marine biologist, said there are plenty of porbeagles swimming off the coast of Massachusetts. Hurley said you can find them from New Jersey all the way to the Mediterranean Sea.

But they’re typically not found dead on a beach in otherwise perfect condition.

“It’s a New England shark, but you typically don’t find them on the beach,” Skomal said.

Porbeagles are not classified as endangered in the United States, although fishing officials do list them as “overfished,” the New England Aquarium said in a statement Friday. The sharks were once common off the coast of Cape Cod, but their numbers dropped after they were targeted by foreign fishing fleets in the 1970s and 1980s.

The predators consume strictly squid and fish. They don’t eat seals or people.

Nevertheless, Hurley said, beachgoers were frightened as well as intrigued.


“Some people were freaked out by it,” he said. “I heard a bunch of people say, ‘Well, that’s the end of my swimming for the summer.’ ”

Steve Annear of the Globe staff contributed to this report. Alyssa Meyers can be reached at alyssa.meyers@globe.com. Follow her on Twitter @ameyers_.