Stranded Shark Pushed to Sea by Beachgoers in Heart-Stopping Video

Visitors at Quinn Rocks, a beach on the coast of Perth, Australia, came across a stranded shark and pushed it back to sea on Sunday.

One of the onlookers, posting anonymously on Reddit as u/clozza1, shared footage of the heart-stopping scene on the website's "Perth" forum. Her first clip showed the shark struggling and thrashing in shallow water while visitors scrambled to figure out what to do. In her second video, an intrepid group of men held the shark by its tail to push it back into the ocean.

The onlooker told Newsweek that the shark was beached for about 15 minutes while seven people, including her partner, attempted to help it back out. The animal, which stretched two meters long, was believed by visitors to be a mako shark—a species listed as globally endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

"The group helping the shark had to get it back into deeper water three or four times before it stopped getting washed back ashore," said the onlooker.

She added that the shark seemed "very exhausted" and did not try to bite the visitors.

Depending on the species, a shark may survive out of water for minutes or up to about an hour, according to Dutch Shark Society. Since sharks do not have skeletons to maintain their body shape and protect their organs, most large species quickly suffer from internal bleeding and crushed organs when subjected to gravity on land. Even if they do not suffocate from lack of oxygen, they might still die from these effects after being returned to water.

Although the beachgoers acted fearlessly, experts do not advise attempting to push a stranded shark back into the water. The best course of action to ensure the animal's survival is to call in experts trained in marine wildlife stranding response, according to Ocean Conservancy, a nonprofit environmental advocacy group.

In most situations, professional rescuers ask the caller to stay where they are, guard the animal while awaiting help and refrain from touching it. In rare cases, they may ask the person to assist with small tasks such as draping wet clothes or towels to keep the shark wet until responders arrive.

The onlooker who spoke to Newsweek said she believed that local rangers were alerted to the incident by other visitors, but not by the men who pushed the shark out, as they were focused on helping it into deeper water.