A dog owner was walking her pups along the beach in Oregon when she came across an unexpected sight: a juvenile salmon shark stranded in shallow water.
At first, Colleen Dunn mistook the animal for driftwood when she saw it near Nehalem Bay State Park. But as she got closer, she realized it was a small shark, about three feet long, lying on its side and gasping for air.
With no visible injuries and no one nearby to assist, Dunn decided to intervene.
‘I had no idea what to do,’ she said in her Facebook video, recounting the ordeal on October 10. ‘I just knew that I could not watch him suffer.’
Dunn, who had recently moved to Oregon, first pulled the shark into a tide pool by its tail, hoping the water would sustain it until the tide returned.
But once she realized the tide was receding and it was getting dark fast, and daylight was fading, she followed her instincts and took action.
‘I [had] to take action as soon as I [could] because there’s no way he [would] survive in a puddle like that overnight especially with the tide being pulled out,’ she said. ‘He [was] obviously extremely weak, tired, and I thought at this point, dead so I just had to act fast,’ she said.
Colleen Dunn was walking her dogs on the shoreline near Nehalem Bay State Park, where she discovered a stranded juvenile salmon shark
The salmon shark was stranded in shallow water before Dunn attempted to return it to the ocean
Pictured: A nap from Dunn’s Facebook video showing the moment she released the shark into the surf
Unable to reach park officials or her husband, Dunn lifted the shark by its tail and ran it to the surf as fast as she could.
‘I picked him up and I got as deep as I could in the water and tossed him,’ she said.
Against the odds, the shark began to stir and swim as waves carried it farther out. Dunn watched for about 10 minutes until it disappeared from view.
The next morning, she checked local social media for any reports of the shark washing back ashore but found none.
Salmon sharks are common in Pacific waters and are often mistaken for juvenile great whites.
They can grow up to 10 feet long and are known for their ability to regulate internal body temperature, allowing them to hunt in colder waters.
Juveniles, however, are more vulnerable to environmental stress.
According to Taylor Chapple, associate professor at Oregon State University and head of the Big Fish Lab, juvenile salmon sharks often wash ashore after developing infections that impair brain function.
Dunn carried the shark by the tail to deeper water in a last-ditch effort to save it as the tide receded
Juvenile salmon sharks are often mistaken for baby great whites and are vulnerable to cold shock and infection
Many are also not large enough to maintain ‘thermal inertia,’ making them vulnerable to cold shock, which further affects their ability to swim and survive.
‘It’s in such a compromised state that even if you were to take it back out into the ocean, it’s very unlikely to survive,’ Chapple told OregonLive. ‘It’s best to let nature take its course.’
Dunn acknowledged the odds but remains hopeful. ‘I don’t know if it survived,’ she said, ‘but I choose to believe he made it.’
This marks the second juvenile salmon shark found on the Oregon coast in 2025. Similar incidents occurred in Pacific City and Rockaway Beach in recent years.
Experts advise that anyone who encounters a stranded shark should report it to Oregon State University’s Big Fish Lab.
