ROCHESTER, N.Y. — A hammerhead shark was sold at the Rochester Public Market on Saturday, and a video of the shark quickly went viral on TikTok with 150,000 views.
Chief Investigative Reporter Berkeley Brean spoke with the vendor and state officials about the unusual sale. Frank An runs Great Ocean Seafood and bought the shark from Boston. He sold the whole thing, including the head, on Saturday.
“Honestly I don’t like too much attention so I would rather it have not but here we are,” An said.
DEC Investigation
DEC police came to An’s warehouse in Rochester on Monday.
“What were they trying to figure out?” Brean asked.
“Whether we were in compliance, whether we had the correct paperwork and all that,” An said.
An confirmed he was in compliance. On Tuesday afternoon, the DEC said it found no violations with the shark at the public market. “No Environmental Conservation Laws were violated in possessing or selling the hammerhead shark at the Rochester Public Market,” the DEC wrote in an email.
“Is it real? That’s crazy”
Brean showed the video to people outside the market.
“Is it real?” one woman asked.“It is,” Brean said.“That’s crazy.”
One woman questioned where it came from. “We’re very very very far from the coast. I don’t know where this came from?” she said.
“What’s the big deal?” asked a man.“A hammerhead shark sold at the public market,” Brean said.“It doesn’t surprise me.”
Experts say it’s a Scalloped Hammerhead
Chris Paparo runs the Marine Science Center at SUNY Stony Brook. He identified the shark as a scalloped hammerhead. “The species of shark that’s in the video looks like a scalloped hammerhead shark,” Paparo said.
Paparo took videos of a scalloped hammerhead 10 and 30 miles off the coast of Long Island. They are legal to catch and sell. “As long as they’re properly permitted there’s no issue with it being there,” Paparo said.
An said he would rather not get another shark after all the attention. “I’d rather not,” An said with a laugh.
Some sharks, including several hammerheads, are protected. Greg Metzger with the South Fork Natural History Museum Shark Research Program on Long Island explained why. “Back in the 70s and 80s, there was an emphasis put on trying to catch sharks and unfortunately for the sharks we did too good of a job and so some of these species numbers have been reduced,” Metzger said.
Metzger said protections are working. “The U.S. is a very good place for a shark to be these days because there’s lot of evidence from various species that populations that were reduced are indeed coming back,” Metzger said.
There are up to 25 different kinds of sharks along the coast of New York.
DEC finds no violations after hammerhead shark sale at Rochester Public Market sparks viral TikTok video WHEC.com.
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