US high school in Florida finds dead shark hanging from rafters

A dead shark was found hanging from the rafters of Ponte Vedra High School in Jacksonville, Florida, United States on Thursday morning. According to the New York Post, students hanged the dead shark after gutting and freezing it on Wednesday night.

"A group of five high school students at Ponte Vedra High School hung a gutted shark on the rafters of the school courtyard,” Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission spokesperson Alex AuBuchon said in an interview with Miami Herald. One of the students told Newsweek that it was a prank played by seniors.

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According to the FWCC, the shark was captured on Tuesday night and kept frozen until it was ready to be hung on Wednesday morning. At 8 a.m. on Thursday, members of the school personnel removed the fish corpse. First Coast News reports it was a sandbar shark, according to Jim Gelsleichter, associate professor of biology and head of the university's Coastal and Marine Biology Flagship Program.

“That is a prohibitive species in Florida, and so we are not able to land those particular species and that's really because the sandbar, their populations have been pretty depleted over the past several decades from over fishing," Gelsleichter told First Coast News.

An investigation is being conducted by the St. John's County School District.