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Viral Video Of Pregnant Shark Was Actually Filmed In Georgia Six Months Ago

By Dustin Wicksell
Published on: 09:19 PST, Dec 5, 2014

Video of a man delivering baby sharks from their deceased mother and returning them to the sea has gone viral recently, yet the incredible footage is actually 6-months-old, and was captured on a beach in Georgia.

As Shark Attack News reports, footage of the pregnant shark’s C-section is wrongly being attributed to a recent event in Cape Town, South Africa, by some media outlets. A short, edited version of the video was apparently re-uploaded to YouTube by bodhispeak on December 1, complete with music. The original video was uploaded six months ago by Beth Cordell, however, and is over six minutes in length.

Though the video has since been set to private, it depicts a beachgoer carefully removing three baby sharks from their mother with a knife. The unedited video features no music, just natural sound, and at the 2:25 mark, bystanders make a reference to being in the state of Georgia.

As ABC 13 notes, restaurant owners Beth Cordell, 55, and Lindsey Cordell, 44, discovered the dead but pregnant shark washed up on a Georgia beach while walking with their three children and a friend. Barcroft TV reports that their 13-year-old son, Lindsey Cordell, recorded the astonishing footage.

They noticed movement within the six-foot-long shark’s stomach after strangers gathered to help remove a hook from its body. A wound from the hook can be observed in the region around the shark’s throat. Realizing that the shark was pregnant, a bystander offered to cut the animal open, releasing the newborns inside.

[Warning: Graphic Video]

A total of three baby sharks were successfully rescued, and returned to the ocean. Though newborn animals are often reliant on their parents, shark pups are born fully independent and autonomous.

Recently, a shark native to Tiger Beach in the Bahamas was severely injured, reappearing after several months with an open bullet wound behind her head. The shark, named Hook by local divers, nonetheless managed to survive the unknown incident. As the Inquisitr previously reported, the famed shark was pregnant when divers last saw her, and was expected to give birth safely, despite her injuries.

Though some media outlets identified the shark in the video as a great white, it was not clear what species actually washed ashore in Georgia.

[Image: Lindsey Cordell via BuzzFeed]

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