Watch 2 Men Save a Beached Great White Shark

A new video shows the dramatic rescue of a beached great white shark off the coast of Chatham, Mass. on Monday.

The video, posted to YouTube, shows the great white gasping for breath, its tail desperately flipping on the beach, as onlookers watch, concerned. The film then cuts to two men—who have been identifiedas harbormaster Stuart Smith and shark expert Gregory Skomal—who are shown scooping buckets of water and splashing the shark, which at first is unresponsive, then shudders awake to cheers and encouragement. The men then tie a string onto the weakened shark’s tail and connect it to a boat, which pulls the shark into the water.

The men gingerly untie the string from the shark’s tail and guide it into the open water by boat.

“Thirty years ago, they’d want to kill it and now they want to save it,” Smith remembered Skomal saying at the time.