PENSACOLA BEACH, Fla. (WKRG) —  A couple from Texas visited Pensacola Beach and got the surprise of their lives: a close encounter with a big shark.

Tina and Josh Fey traveled to Gulf Breeze for their anniversary but what they weren’t expecting was to see an almost 10 foot Mako shark wash ashore while they were relaxing on Pensacola Beach.

“We were sitting on the beach just having a good time and my buddy just said, ‘Look out in the water there, man.’ I see that fin and I was like, yeah, it was two or three sandbars away from us,” Josh said. “Eventually it just turned to the left and started coming directly beeline toward the shoreline, and I said , ‘That’s a big shark coming in.’ And we thought it was chasing some bait or whatnot, but it came all the way to shoreline and beached itself.”

Even though Josh is an avid fisherman, and this wasn’t his first time seeing a shark, he had never seen one this up close and personal or this large.

“She had about two inch teeth on her, and it was two rows of them, a lot of rows of them, and they were pretty big,” the couple said. “It was just thrashing all around and I said, ‘We got to get her back in the water because she’s gonna die; something’s wrong….she’s sick; she might’ve got caught by somebody offshore.'”

The couple said they contacted authorities to let them know the shark had washed ashore. They then took matters into their own hands once they realized the shark may have just needed a nudge back into the water.

“Thank you to the guys that helped us,” Josh said. “You know, if it wasn’t for them, I would not be able to move her. She was every bit of 5 to 600 pounds; I would think. I couldn’t budge her; it took four of us to enter into the water. I hope everybody else that comes to beaches and sees a distressed animal like that, you know, with sea turtles or anything like that, that they help them out.”