Dozens of dead sharks have been washed up on a Carmarthenshire beach - and there are fears they may be victims of an illegal practice.
A video showing a beach strewn with shark bodies has been posted on Facebook, with the person who filmed it estimating there could have been around 100 dead fish washed ashore at Burry Port .
The woman, who did not want to be named, said on Facebook: "Such a sad, wasteful sight. I stopped counting in the end as every wave brought more bodies.
"It was mostly smooth-hounds down Burry Port, but heavily pregnant ones with pups hanging out of them.
"I dread to think how many were still floating in the sea. I'm sure what we saw was a small percentage of what was thrown back."
Watch the video here:
A spokesman for the Marine Conservation Society said the fish appeared to be smooth-hounds, also called dogfish.
They are a type of shark common in our waters.
The sharks can often be caught by trawlers as a bycatch, sometimes in great numbers. They are then dumped at sea.
But the film appears to show some bodies with the dorsal fin removed. If that's the case it may well be a criminal act.
The spokesman said: "Shark finning for overseas markets in Welsh waters would be highly unusual and almost certainly illegal."
Shark finning is the practice of removing the fins from a captured shark and discarding the animal at sea, still living or dead.
Unable to swim effectively without their dorsal fins, they sink to the bottom of the sea and die of suffocation or are eaten by other predators.
The fins are often used for shark fin soup and traditional cures, particularly in China and the surrounding area.
It's estimated that finning kills up to 100 million sharks each year.
The Carmarthenshire fish sighting has angered other fishermen.
Fisherman Vince Sims said: "What angers me most of all is this is the result of trawling, not fishing with a line.
"They've got all the rules about how much we can or cannot do in regards to cod or bass capture, us fishermen would never kill fish, only for the plate.
"Wrong. Very wrong."
Another, Ian Wish, said: "If you notice the fins have been cut off. It's commercial fishermen selling the fins to the Chinese for medical purposes, then chucking the carcasses overboard."
