Graphic video shows man paying price after getting too close to beached shark: 'That was completely avoidable'

Graphic video shows man paying price after getting too close to beached shark: 'That was completely avoidable'

Claire Huber

Thu, December 4, 2025 at 10:30 PM UTC

2 min read

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If you were to put yourself in the shoes of a lemon shark pulled from your habitat, would you grin for a photo with your captor or bite him?

One Florida lemon shark found themselves in such a situation and, according to ABC7 News (@abc7newsbayarea), "the shark bit back."

They shared footage of the incident on TikTok.

Surprised and without autonomy in a catch-and-release situation, the lemon shark twisted from the hands of two men posing for a picture and gave one a forceful chomp to the leg. An ABC News (@ABCNews) YouTube video quotes the man who was bitten: "You don't know what a wild animal's gonna do, you know? So, it happens. We're in his territory."

Interestingly, he could make this observation only after being attacked. Had he considered that wild animals such as sharks have instincts for self-preservation, he might not have ended up with an injured leg and a hospital bill.

When put in a compromising situation, all animals will likely put up a fight. When bison feel threatened, they may charge people in their personal space. Bears, too, will attack when approached.

Lemon sharks are no different. Animals at their core care about one thing: survival. If any person gets in the way of that, the person could end up injured or dead.

Unfortunately, when animals attack, they are sometimes euthanized. The lemon shark in question was not put down, but the shark and its community are under fire.

According to the Save Our Seas Foundation, lemon sharks — social and yellow-brown in color — are near-threatened due to overfishing and habitat loss.

As apex predators, the sharks maintain balance and biodiversity in their ecosystems, and to do this, they must eat. Fisheries, though, can throw off this balance, replacing apex predators as "top dog" and leaving the sharks with less food to eat.

The sharks and their prey are both overfished, which has created an imbalance in the ecosystem that reaches all the way to humans. We rely on healthy ecosystems to support our eating habits, but when we take too much, we hurt ourselves in the end.

As mere creatures who share this planet with a multitude of others, we humans must leave wildlife alone.

Commenters on the TikTok video were Team Shark.

"Sharks aren't toys," one said. "I hope the shark is ok."

"It's almost as if that was completely unavoidable," another commented.

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