On Monday, people came to the aid of a great white shark that stranded itself on a beach in Chatham, Massachusetts. Videos shot during the rescue show experts keeping the seven-foot (two-meter) fish wet and then dragging it back into the ocean with a rope. Though the team was able to resuscitate the fish from a boat, it's unknown whether it survived.
The first step in saving a shark is tossing water on its body, which keep tissues alive and gills pumping. In this case, the great white struggled to breathe for up to an hour.
He doesn't know how long a shark can survive out of water, but if its gills are dry, it's not breathing. "That will result in death fairly quickly," he says.
After a harbormaster tied a rope around the great white's tail, a boat pulled the shark into shallow waters, where it appeared lifeless. "I thought it was dead," Skomal says.
Even so, Skomal moved its tail back and forth to prevent rigor mortis and circulate oxygenated blood. Since that didn't provoke a response, the only way to revive it was to pull the animal forward. "You want water to pass into its mouth and over its gills," Skomal says. "That will provide oxygen."
The rescue team, which dragged the shark alongside their boat for over 15 minutes, was devising an autopsy plan when the fish suddenly started to swim forward.