A pair of fishermen in Australia were baffled as they sailed towards an unidentified floating object, but a closer look revealed the oddity's grim terrestrial origin.
As they initially approached the round anomaly, they first thought it may have been another vessel or a giant balloon that had somehow landed on the water.
However once their craft got close enough to smell the scene, they realized that the anomalous 'object' was, in fact, the body of a dead whale.
The balloon-like shape of the carcass was due to gasses expanding inside the animal's stomach.
One of the fishermen marveled that the sight was the strangest thing he'd seen in over two decades on the job.
Their encounter with the whale was a somewhat fleeting glimpse of its decomposition because, upon sailing back towards it later in the day, the creature had become deflated due to a scavenger taking a bite out of the body.
It's likely that, once word got around amongst the other fish, the whale's remains didn't stay intact much longer.
Thankfully, like all good fishermen, they managed to capture some incredible images of the inflated whale before it became dinner for other denizens of the deep.
Source: Mirror