On Sept. 12, when Nicole Lattanzi Wood and her husband were at their condominium in Rockaway Beach, they spotted a young salmon shark with a bloody mouth, struggling at the tideline, they told Oregon Coast Beach Connection.

The couple went down to the beach to help and posted their adventure on the Life on the Oregon Coast Facebook page. Wood thought about grabbing it by the tail. “That was my first instinct,” she posted, “but the way he snapped his head back towards his tail … Did you see all those teeth?”

Instead, they used a large stick to roll the shark back into the water, which took about half an hour. “We stayed on the beach and watched for a while to see if it would show up again but it didn’t,” she told Oregon Coast Beach Connection. 

Calling the Seaside Aquarium is the right thing to do, Keith Chandler, general manager of the aquarium advised, but the couple couldn’t find the phone number in the heat of the moment. “We worried it would die before anyone could get to us,” she said. “So we did what we thought was right at the time.”

Sadly, Chandler was not encouraging about the shark’s probable outcome. “If it’s on the beach, it’s probably going to die anyway,” he said.

Even so, Wood is staying positive. “Checked the beach again in the morning, too, didn’t find anything,” she added. “So hoping it made it.” (Photo: Nicole Lattanzi Wood)