Live 6-foot shark washes ashore on Outer Banks beach as visitors watch, video shows

A live 6-foot shark found its way onto dry land on Sunday, April 16, in front of stunned Outer Banks visitors along the North Carolina coast.

Coastal photographers Wes and Beth Snyder report the shark appeared around 4:45 p.m. on Pea Island.

“This shark washed ashore still alive right in front of Beth and I,” Wes Snyder wrote in a Facebook post. “It’s still alive on the beach but I imagine it’s beaching because it’s dying.”

The predator was believed to be a sandbar shark, a species that grows to 8 feet and has “severely declined from over fishing” in recent years, N.C. State University reports.

Video shared by Snyder shows it was pushed ashore by waves and continued to show signs of life. It bore a tag with the numbers 415046, which revealed it had been tagged earlier in the day, Snyder said.

The shark died about a half hour after being found, he wrote in an update.

“Blood was coming out of the gills and mouth and we were told to not try and rescue it,” Snyder posted. “We don’t have health insurance and I wasn’t about to try and wrangle a 6(-foot) shark back in the ocean.”

His Facebook video had been viewed nearly 30,000 times as of April 17 and gotten nearly 2,000 comments and reactions. Many were from people who felt sorry for the shark.

“As much as I am afraid of them, this is still sad to watch,” Kimberly Nazar-Grant wrote on Facebook.

This story was originally published April 17, 2023 at 7:09 AM with the headline "Live 6-foot shark washes ashore on Outer Banks beach as visitors watch, video shows."