New unnerving footage captured by French “urban explorer” and YouTuber, Juj’ Urbex unveiled images and video footage of a mummified shark that looks like a zombie, along with several other decaying marine creatures that continue to decompose in an unnamed, abandoned aquarium in Spain.
The explorer has not disclosed the aquarium’s location to stop copycat explorers from seeing the site and to avoid being caught (urban exploring is a form of trespassing), Urbex said.
However, she did reveal that the aquarium was somewhere in Spain and was closed in 2014 after a 43-foot wave impaired the building. In January 2014, a freak wave of enormous size hit Spain’s northwest coast, causing significant damage, according to the Spanish news site, The Local, suggesting that this area could be where the aquarium is located.
The video shows the rotting remains of a small reef shark inside a broken display case. The size of the glass box indicates that the shark was already dead when the aquarium initially put it on display. The body, therefore, had likely been treated with chemicals and kept in an airtight case to preserve it. Still, after the case broke, exposing the shark to air, it started to deteriorate, slowly giving it a zombie-like appearance. All living animals were transferred to new aquariums when the aquarium was damaged and subsequently evacuated, according to an article from LiveScience. Still, the shark corpse may have been less of a priority and thus left behind, Juj’ Urbex speculated.
Discovering the dried-out remains of the shark “made me feel a lot of sorrow for this beast” even though it was already dead, Juj’ Urbex said in the translated video into English.
In addition to the shark, the explorers found the decomposed remains of an octopus and squid inside separate shattered glass jars. Juj’ Urbex also speculates that similar to the shark, these creatures were likely already dead when the aquarium closed its doors. However, after their jars, which likely contained formaldehyde, were smashed, the cephalopods began to decompose. Juj’ Urbex also found two sea stars that were left behind, but unlike the other animals, these invertebrates had not started to decay because they had been completely dried out before being put on display.
