A shark who bit off a little more than he could chew was rescued in the most Canadian way possible. Two men spotted the Greenland shark choking to death on a moose carcass and stepped in to help.
Derrick Chaulk was on a drive near the coast in Norris Arm North in Newfoundland when he spotted what he thought was a beached whale. The whale turned out to be a shark with a large portion of a moose in its mouth.
Jeremy Ball, who happened to be nearby, assisted Chaulk in getting the chunk of moose out of the choking shark’s mouth and pushing the mammal back out into the sea.
“He pulled the rope, and I pushed with my boot,” Chaulk told CBC News. “Between the two of us we got him out into deeper water.”
How did a shark get ahold of a moose like that? It’s hard to know. Chaulk theorizes that the shark found the remains of a moose that had been gutted by hunters. Hunters will often discard unwanted moose parts directly into the harbor.
The shark, purportedly just swimming around and doing shark things, probably felt it had come across a hell of a windfall when finding the delicious, bloody moose morsels and went to town. Thus the choking was made possible.
Some argue that the men should have left the shark alone, but Jeffrey Gallant, of the Greenaldn Shark and Elasmobranch Education and Research Group says they did the right thing. The potential for injury definitely existed, but it was still a nice thing to do.
“When you’re man-handling a shark like this and trying to get it back in the water,” Gallant told CBC News, “the fact that its mouth was otherwise pre-occupied by chewing on the meat, you reduce the risk yourself of getting bit accidentally.”
But Chaulk regrets nothing.
“It was a good feeling to see that shark swim out,” he said. “Knowing that you saved his life.”
