A scuba diver in Brighton used his quick thinking to rescue a shark that had washed up on the beach.
“This morning I was walking on Brighton beach and I came across two small-spotted catsharks washed up quite far up the beach, but they were still just about alive,” says Gio Prince on Instagram.
According to The Wildlife Trusts, the small-spotted catshark (Cyliorhinus canicular), also known as the lesser-spotted dogfish, is the most common shark in UK seas.
“Very often when these sharks are caught and released by fishermen, they’ll get disoriented and will beach themselves again,” Prince says.
The sharks were moving slightly so Prince decided to try and save them. He filled a couple of containers with seawater and put the sharks in them. This gave him time to go to Brighton Watersports where he set up a temporary tank with an air pump and fresh seawater to see if they would recover.
“One of the sharks really perked up after a couple of hours in the tank and was ready for release,” he says. The other shark, which had a hole in its gill, sadly didn’t make it.
Image and video: Gio Prince
More stories about wildlife and the environment