Drowned with tridents cannot melee attack while riding a zombie nautilus

In Bedrock, drowned with tridents use a melee attack when their target gets within 3 blocks.

However, a drowned mounted on a zombie nautilus cannot use the trident’s melee attack. Something I noticed is that when the drowned rider is close to the player, it begins throwing tridents at a faster rate, and this seems to be the same as the rate at which they perform trident melee attacks. This leads me to believe that when the drowned is close enough, it attempts to melee attack with the trident but cannot since it is riding the zombie nautilus, and throws it instead.