Fisherman Noe Campos didn’t know what he had snagged at the end of his line, he just knew it was big and was caught, the line wrapped around the pole. Campos waded into the water off Venice Beach, Florida, to untangle the line and save the fish. To his surprise, the “fish” was in fact a twelve foot hammerhead shark and she was in more trouble than Campos’ hook. Fellow fisherman Andrew Weedman spotted a large bite-mark through the abdomen of the shark. That’s when the two men saw the wiggle of a little shark tail within wound. He and his friends realized this shark was very pregnant and struggling to give birth with the wound in her side. Together, the fishermen pulled the baby hammerheads out one at time, totaling twenty pups. According to Weedman as he spoke to WPTV, “They were wiggling and squirming. They were definitely very alert.” In the same interview, Mr. Campos described how he “stood in the water for a couple of seconds to make sure they swam off good. I held them and as soon as I put them out, voom! They took off.”
(A group of hammerhead pups. Image Credit; theage.com.au)
Although the mother did not survive the bite injury, hopefully her 20 offspring grow to adulthood and further increase the numbers of this endangered species.
Read more at FOX News and at WPTV
