It was hardly the epic man-versus-shark battle seen at the end of Jaws, but a fisherman at a Florida beach was caught on video wrangling a hammerhead shark.
In a video posted to YouTube on Sunday, a fisherman pulls a reportedly two-metre long hammerhead to shore in St. Andrews State Park, in Panama City Beach, while crowds of beachgoers looked on.
According to local television station WMBB, it happened around 2:00 p.m. ET, in an area known as the “kiddie pool.”
People didn’t appear as concerned about their safety once the shark was hauled onto the beach and crowded around the shark.
A number of sources reported the shark gave birth to a number of pups, which then appeared to squirm away from the shark back into the Gulf of Mexico. Global News contacted University of Florida shark expert Dr. George Burgess to verify what is seen in the video.
Burgess said they were not hammerhead pups, but remoras.
Remoras are fish that attach to large marine animals – such as sharks, whales and mantas rays — using a sucker-like organ.
Those were the animals seen wriggling away from the shark and into the water.
Attempts were made to help the shark back into the ocean, but the shark died about an hour after it was brought to shore.
Hammerheads are known to frequent the area, Park Ranger Brian Addison told WMBB’s News 13.
He said he’s unsure why the shark came into the shallow water so close to shore, noting the shark was “in great distress.”
“Fishing is a legal activity. Unfortunately, he did catch a hammerhead shark, and I’m just assuming that he was attempting to pull him back onto the shoreline and retrieve the hook,” Addison said.
Correction: This story is an updated version from the original story. The previous published version did not note the possibility that the small fish were remoras.
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