Legend is a juvenile lemon shark who was caught by the Bimini Shark Lab team after we noticed him swimming with an object entangled around him. Upon capture, we saw that he was stuck with a metal gasket (a thin piece of metal that goes between the top and the bottom halves of an engine) from his pectoral fins to his dorsal fin.

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Our team quickly worked to free Legend from the entrapment and documented his injury. It was clear that he had been stuck in this awful metal necklace for quite some time, as the gasket had begun to embed into Legend's underside, causing an inch deep laceration around the circumference of his girth.

Legend was released into the protection of the nearby mangroves, and swam off strong! We hope to see him again to document his recovery.

 

Sharks are incredibly resilient animals and face many anthropogenic threats. A study by our colleague Dr. Steve Kessel, documented the amazing ability sharks have to heal and recover. Read the peer-reviewed paper here: