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Foregoing The Selfie, Beachgoer Saves Stranded Shark

By Dustin Wicksell
Published on: 08:25 PST, Mar 5, 2016

Footage of a Florida man dragging a shark from the surf for an ill-timed photo recently sparked outrage online, but back in 2012, another beachgoer forwent the selfie in order to rescue a similar predator on the other side of the country.

The fateful incident transpired in 2012, when Oregon resident Alan Holyoak went to Seaside for his niece’s wedding, as The Dodo reports. A teacher at Brigham Young University, Holyoak has a background in Marine Biology. This turned out to be a prescient fact one morning when he and his wife were walking down the beach, and observed another person looking at something in the surf.

Holyoak couldn’t tell what the object was from a distance, though he noticed it was fairly large. Unsure whether he was looking at a juvenile dolphin or some other species of marine life, he approached closer, only to find himself face to face with a 4-foot-long salmon shark.

The species resembles nothing so much as a great white shark, and is commonly mistaken for that more well-known variety. It is hardly alone; other sharks bear a similar resemblance to the great white, including the porbeagle shark, as the Inquisitr has previously reported.

Upon closer examination, Holyoak found that the salmon shark exhibited a rust-colored patch underneath its chin. This sign indicated to him that the animal was asphyxiating, stranded on the beach as it were. Quickly, he went to work, picking up the shark and placing its head into the surf, in an effort to move water over its gills. As the shark showed faint signs of life, Holyoak worked to revive it.

As his wife snapped photographs, Holyoak eventually brought the shark back to the beach. Out of the water, however, the animal began to show signs of movement, and Holyoak quickly took it back into the sea, this time into deeper water.

Once in the ocean, the shark finally found its strength once more, and swam off into the depths. Despite his good dead, Holyoak cautioned that wild animals like the shark that he aided can still potentially be dangerous. Nevertheless, the experience left Holyoak carrying his head a little higher.

“I really felt a sense of satisfaction being able to help out. It was really great … [but] it’s not the sort of thing you do casually. Even a small shark can have a nasty bite… Nature’s not Disneyland, but I knew if something wasn’t done, it was definitely going to die. It was obviously in distress.”

Holyoak isn’t the only beachgoer to rush to the aid of a potentially dangerous predator recently. This past summer, three great white sharks washed ashore in Cape Cod. One of the animals died before it was found, while the other two were aided by passers-by, and dragged back into the ocean by officials. The second shark to come ashore, a large adult, expired before it was returned to the sea, yet the first animal managed to survive.

A young white shark, it was thought to be beyond help, even as officials towed it through the ocean to move water over its gills. As they began to discuss dissecting the animal, however, the shark came back to its senses, swimming away under its own power, as CBS noted at the time. Dubbed “Jameson” by its rescuers, the shark has since been detected by receivers in the area multiple times, proving its survival.

While Holyoak luckily got to the shark in time to save it, he observed that most of the animals which become stranded die before they are found by beachgoers. For at least two of the ocean predators, however, humans have proven an unlikely savior in the last few years.

[Image via Pixabay | Cropped and Resized | CCO 1.0]

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