VIDEO: Huge Alabama Shark Flops Onto Beach, Sends Kids Screaming

GULF SHORES, AL — An unnerving cellphone video recorded Friday afternoon at a white-sand beach along Alabama's southern shore shows a giant shark chasing a fish all the way up into the shallows, sending kids in swim trunks flying out of the water and screaming "Shark!" as they dash to safety.

"I am shaking this just happened!!!!" Alabama resident Kayla Rotenberry Blanks wrote in the caption for her Facebook video, which has since been viewed millions of times.

"Yes it was right in front of me, and yes he came within inches of someone!" Blanks wrote.

Below, watch the chaotic scene unfold at Gulf Shores. (Want more local news from Alabama? You're in luck: You can now sign up for Patch's free email newsletters and breaking news alerts from the region.)

Blanks later told Patch there were no lifeguards nearby at the time.

In fact, it was a group of vacationing firemen and paramedics who first spotted the shark, Blanks said in a Facebook message. And "one actually pulled a little girl out of the water because she actually didn't speak any English, and they didn't understand when everybody was yelling shark," she added.

Grant Brown, head spokesman for the City of Gulf Shores — population 10,000, motto "Small Town, Big Beach" — confirmed that lifeguards are not deployed along the entire coastline. (And Brown would be the one to know: He also serves as the town's lifeguard overseer, recreation director and head of cultural affairs.)

"People have to be diligent," the city spokesman said. "Sharks live in the Gulf of Mexico, and they occasionally tend to come close to shore."

But in his 25 years in Gulf Shores, Brown said he's never seen a shark come up as far as the one in Blanks' viral Facebook video.

"That's odd," he told Patch. "I've never really seen one flopping around so close to shore."

Still, Brown said town officials are treating last Friday's shark sighting as an isolated incident, and do not plan on setting out any of the small purple flags normally used to alert beachgoers to underwater dangers like sharks and herds of man o' wars.

Asked if he knew what type of shark appeared in the Facebook video, Brown admitted he was "probably not the best person to speak to" about local sea life.

"I actually have a biology degree, but I don't remember much from 1989," he said.

Instead, the Gulf Shores spokesman recommended we reach out to Phillip West, "coastal resources manager" for Orange Beach, the next town over.

Reached by phone Monday, West knew immediately what we were calling about. "Oh, yeah — I saw it yesterday," he said of the shark video.

"My wife said, 'Is that real?!'"

Based on 15 years' experience fishing in the Gulf, West said the shark looked to him, if he "had to put money on it," like a 10- to 12-foot hammerhead chasing a large tarpon — Alabama's state fish — up onto shore.

"That shark needs to know he needs a special tag if he's gonna kill it," West joked.

Although the shark's head isn't quite visible in the video, West said "the dorsal just has that great hammerhead shape: sharp, tall and narrow."

"That's the one I'm going with," the local expert said.

And while hammerhead-on-human conflicts are rare, West said, they're not unheard of.

Officials from both side-by-side Alabama beach towns made sure to warn local swimmers to stay out of the water in low-light hours or whenever "a lot of bait fish" appear to be in the area, and to take off any shiny jewelry that could remind a shark of glinting fish scales.

"Because it just takes one swipe," West said.

Video courtesy of Kayla Blanks/Facebook