A St. Petersburg woman vacationing in Massachusetts with her family helped save a great white shark that beached itself on the shoreline Monday.
Camera phones were rolling as beachgoers jumped in to help save its life. The shark was trying to grab a bird when the tide quickly receded leaving it stranded and left to die on the beach. Some curious beachgoers scrambled to get buckets of water and dumped bucketful after bucketful into its gills to help keep the shark alive.
It worked.
Kelly Scannell had never seen a shark even though she lives in Florida. When she first came across the shark on Monday, the first thing that came to her mind wasn’t even closely related to the fact it was still alive. “Personally, I wanted to get one of its teeth,” she said, “because I have I have a shark teeth collection.”
But once Kelly saw the shark was alive, she quickly changed her mind. “It was so unbelievable to see,” she said.
Kelly says the shark was out of water about forty-five minutes. Video she shot from her cell phone shows about 30-40 beachgoers pitching in to help the shark by dumping the water into its gills. But when the situation started to turn grim for the great white, Kelly and her family thought about taking action. “We were going to grab it by its tail and drag it out before the harbor master got there,” she said.
But marine agency personnel nearby warned the family not to touch the shark because it could have been endangered. Kelly knew that doing so could have resulted in major fines because the act would have been caught on camera. Conservationists arrived on scene and were able to tie a rope to the shark’s rear fin and tow it back into the water, unharmed. The shark slowly acclimated back to the water and returned to deeper water.
Even though the experience was fascinating for Kelly and her family, she says she’s a bit paranoid to return to the water herself.
“Because seeing that shark…there must have been many more sharks around,” she said.
