Baby shark washes up on Pacific City beach

Roy Cabal was on the beach Sunday in Pacific City when a co-worker alerted him to an unusual sight nearby: a shark wiggling in the sand.

The young fish was there for about 20 minutes near Bob Straub State Park before waves washed it back out to sea, said Cabal, who works for Twin Creeks Beach and Trail Rides in Pacific City.

In his years working and living near the beach — he grew up in Pacific City — Cabal, 48, said he had never seen a shark on shore before.

The shark was around 4 feet long and didn’t appear to be injured, Cabal said.

Taylor Chapple, an associate professor at Oregon State University who leads the Big Fish Lab, said it’s common for sharks to wash ashore this time of year because they can develop infections affecting their brain function and ability to swim.

This salmon shark was likely a newborn, Chapple said.

Salmon sharks, like humans, are endothermic, so they maintain warmer body temperatures than their surroundings. But some young sharks aren’t quite big enough to maintain “thermal inertia,” he said, sometimes causing them to get caught in colder water and enter cold shock.

That can cause meningitis, leading to bacterial build-up in the shark’s brain and eventually killing it.

By the time a salmon shark like the one Cabal saw washes up on shore, it’s past the point of saving, said Chapple, who examined Cabal’s photos.

“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,” he said. “It’s best to let nature take its course.”

If people stumble across sharks on shore in Oregon or Washington, they should call Chapple’s lab or report it to the lab online. Then, researchers can collect samples or bring the sharks in for study, Chapple said.

Typically, the Big Fish Lab receives around 15 to 20 such reports each year, usually in late July and August, he said. This was the first sighting Chapple had heard of this year.

Salmon sharks are often mistaken for great white sharks, Chapple said.

They’re common in the Pacific Ocean off Oregon, where they eat salmon, said Lynn Mattes, who works in the Oregon Fish and Wildlife Department’s marine resources program.

Most of these stranded sharks are affected by disease, Mattes said, so it’s best not to poke around or let pets snack on washed-up sharks.

Instead, Mattes said, report the sighting — then take it in.

It’s “not something everyone gets to see,” she said.

CORRECTION: This story has been updated to correct that not all sharks are endothermic and to remove a reference to parasites. It also clarifies that salmon sharks are often mistaken for great white sharks.

— Maddie Khaw covers breaking news, public safety and more for The Oregonian/OregonLive. Reach her at mkhaw@oregonian.com.