“Thank you to the guys that helped us. You know, if it wasn’t for them, I would not be able to move her. She was every bit of 5 to 600 pounds; I would think. I couldn’t budge her; it took four of us to enter into the water. I hope everybody else that comes to beaches and sees a distressed animal like that, you know, wih sea turtles or anything like that, that they help them out.” -Josh Fey
A Texas couple visiting Florida to celebrate their anniversary had a relaxing day in Pensacola Beach interrupted by a 10 foot Mako shark that washed ashore. WKRG reports Tina and Josh Fey were just chilling on the sand when they spotted a telltale dorsal fin in the water:
“We were sitting on the beach just having a good time and my buddy just said, ‘Look out in the water there, man.’ I see that fin and I was like, yeah, it was two or three sandbars away from us. Eventually it just turned to the left and started coming directly beeline toward the shoreline, and I said , ‘That’s a big shark coming in.’ And we thought it was chasing some bait or whatnot, but it came all the way to shoreline and beached itself.” –Josh Fey
To their surprise the mako beached itself. The couple contacted authorities to alert them of the situation and then took matters into their own hands when they realized the shark may have just needed a nudge back into the water.
“It was just thrashing all around and I said, ‘We got to get her back in the water because she’s gonna die; something’s wrong….she’s sick; she might’ve got caught by somebody offshore.’” –Josh Fey
The task proved too difficult for Josh to accomplish alone but there were a few rough and ready bystanders who jumped in to help the rescue effort and lets just say it was tid bit sketchy. Not sure what would happen if a 10 foot mako’s thrashing tail caught you on the jaw but judging from the video it we very nearly found out.
They eventually got the big fella back in the water and will have a hell of story with accompanying footage when they get back to Texas. Wild.