A shark was rescued by a California woman and her friend last week after it was found stranded on the shore of a Nantucket beach.
Liza Phillips lives in California and owns a home in Siasconscet. She was walking across Low Beach with her friend, Ted Rock, on Aug. 16, when she came across a great white shark stranded on the shore, the Nantucket Current reported.
“I was tossing the football with my dad and he looked down the beach and said ‘Oh there’s a beached whale’!” Phillips told the Current. “I grabbed my phone and started sprinting down the beach, and as soon as I got close enough to see it, I said ‘Oh my god’.”
Phillips and her friend rushed to action, pushing the shark into the water until it could swim away, the Current reported.
Great white sharks rarely get stranded on beach shores, John Chisholm, a marine scientist at the New England Aquarium, said.
Chisholm said a great white shark could end up stranded on a beach shore for a variety of reasons.
The animals could be chasing seals to the point where they get stuck, a large wave could push them onto the shore or they could even be sick or hurt, he said.
Pushing a beached shark back into the water yourself isn’t the best rescue tactic, Chisholm said.
The shark expert suggested people instead notify local authorities, lifeguards or the New England Aquarium if they come across a beached animal.
“It’s definitely dangerous for someone without experience to deal with a shark that big,” he added.
Equipped with nearly 300 razor-sharp teeth and rough skin, great white sharks can be dangerous to approach, and getting hit by their tail can hurt someone, according to Chisholm.
Despite the risk, Chisholm said Phillips and Rock did well at successfully pushing the shark back into the ocean. It also helped that the animal was already a few inches in the water.
If the shark was fully on dry land, people might not have been able to move it, the shark expert said.
But the Nantucket beachgoers “did a good job,” Chisholm said. “They were cautious.”
