Tourist Nash Core admits he felt fear when he and his 11-year-old son helped him walk to the water off the coast of Australia to rescue a large, 3-meter white shark stuck in shallow water.
Three local men were able to bring the suffering animals back from the sand bank into deeper water after nearly an hour of rescue operations near the coastal South Australia town of Aldrosan on Tuesday.
“Is it sick? I was just tired,” said Core, who was visiting with his family from Queensland's Gold Coast. “We definitely put it in deeper water, so hopefully we're still swimming.”
Kore travels through Australia with his wife Ashcore and his son Parker, 11, Lennox, 7 years old, and Ashcore, and encounters a rare human embarrassment interaction.
Nash Core used the drone to shoot a video of the writhing shark before he and Parker decided to help the trio who were struggling to move the shark into deeper water.
“To be honest, I had some thoughts about 'Oh, why are you going out here?',” Core said Thursday.
“As we went outside, my young son, Parker, turned to me and said, 'My heart pounds.'
The three men used crab lakes, a garden rake-like tool for digging small crabs out of the sand, to move the sharks into deeper water by the time the father and son arrived.
Core said he decided against pushing the shark itself.
“They put it in deeper water. So I thought it was probably not a good idea to go any further. That's the territory and I'll come back,” he said.
Core said the rescuer had not seen the beach sharks later.
Vanessa Pilotta, a wildlife scientist at Macquarie University, said that sharks are not common, but are becoming more prominent through social media.
There may be several reasons why marine animals like sharks may have chains on their chains, including illnesses and injuries. The shark may have chased its prey into shallow waters, Pilotta said.
“When you see things like this, human safety comes first and foremost,” Pilotta said. “You can contact the environmental authorities.
