CHATHAM (CNN) — Shark stories don’t always have happy endings.
There have been 10 shark attacks in the Carolinas this year alone — one terrifying weekend left two teenagers each without an arm.
But this tale of man and beast is different.
Jaws dropped on Tuesday when beachgoers in Chatham, Massachusetts spotted a stranded great white shark near death, struggling to breathe.
In a viral video clip, seen above, rescuers splash water on motionless animal, before tying a rope around it and pulling it back out to sea using a small boat.
“We know that it was in bad shape, and we were trying to irrigate the gills to let the shark breathe and revive it,” Atlantic White Shark Conservancy member Cynthis Wigren explained to CNN affiliate WCVB.
But once in the water, the weakened predator continued to float limply.
“We had a period of time when it looked like it was not going to survive,” said Wigren.
In the end, the team used ropes to support the shark and guide it out to sea.
When it finally swam away on its own, rescuers cheered with joy.
The Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries said it put an acoustic tag on the shark that will record the animal’s movements — that data will hopefully be downloaded by the week’s end.
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