Oak Hill ,CA : Truck hauling sharks crashes and struck median after Shark bite on Wednesday morning ,June 10th 2015

In the shark bite capital of the world, rescue workers are used to dealing with sharks at the beach, not in the middle of Interstate 95.

But a separated tire on a semi-truck and trailer hauling five 5-foot-long sandbar sharks sent Volusia County firefighters and the Florida Highway Patrol to the northbound lanes of the interstate near Oak Hill on a rainy Wednesday afternoon.

The truck went off the road and got stuck in the center median at about 2:20 p.m., said Howard Bailey, deputy fire chief.

The crash proved a rough ride for the sharks, on their way from Marathon in the Florida Keys to an aquarium in Coney Island, New York, said Sgt. Kim Montes, FHP spokeswoman.

Five sharks were being hauled, each in its own individual aquarium, Montes said. One of those aquariums was jostled and damaged, and the shark died, she said. The other four sharks survived and were going to be transferred to another truck, said Montes. By 8 p.m., SeaWorld Orlando had arrived on scene and reported it was moving three of the sharks. No information was available on the fourth shark.

The New York Aquarium is in Coney Island. The Aquarium is in the midst of a project building a 57,000 square-foot facility — Ocean Wonders: Sharks! — to house more than 115 species of marine life, including sharks, according to its website. Efforts to reach the aquarium to determine if the sharks were bound for its facility were unsuccessful.

The truck driver, Georgia resident Gerald Barnhart, 64, and his passengers, Erik Wink, 24, and Frank Young, 30, both of Marathon, were not injured, Montes reported.


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Truck hauling sharks crashes near Oak Hill