Terrified children run for their lives after seeing a dorsal fin

Terrified children ran for their lives and screamed ‘shark’ after seeing a dorsal fin emerge in the shallows of a holiday resort in Malta – but all was not as it seemed.

Video shows youths screaming and running from what they thought was a terrifying predator, with one screaming, “Oh my god, run! Shark!’

Four children run across an inflatable footbridge at Mellieha Bay, on Malta’s north coast, as the creature thrashed in the shallows and swam towards them.

The sea began to swirl with the force of the animal’s sharp movements when a lifeguard blew a whistle and yelled at tourists to get out of the water.

But all was not as it seemed – and the locals soon realized that what the tourists initially thought was a shark was in fact a large tuna.

Video shows tourists, believed to be British, screaming and running from what they thought was a terrifying predator, with one screaming, ‘Oh my god, run! Shark!’

The sea began to swirl with the force of the animal’s sharp movements, while in the background a lifeguard can be heard blowing a whistle and yelling at tourists to get out of the water

A man was heard saying ‘tuna, tuna’ to the terrified tourists after taking a closer look at the agitated fish, which nearly got stuck in the shallows of the bay before swimming away from the beach.

It later emerged that the bluefin tuna had died after getting stuck on a shallow rocky part of the nearby coast, the report says I love Malta.

It was tossing in the shallows when it mortally wounded itself on the sharp rocks.

Vacationers had unsuccessfully tried to get the tuna off the rocks, but it died from a series of injuries.

Video shows the tuna lying motionless in the shallows as tourists brought it to shore. The images show how the rocks had pierced the tuna’s body, leaving the fish with a series of bloodied wounds.

It later emerged that the bluefin tuna had died after getting stuck on a shallow rocky part of the nearby coast

Video shows the tuna lying motionless in the shallows as tourists brought it to shore. The images show how the rocks had pierced the tuna’s body, leaving the fish with a series of bloodied wounds

It’s unclear where the big tuna came from, with local media speculating it may have escaped from a nearby fish farm.

Malta’s five tuna farms receive about a quarter of all the world’s eastern Atlantic bluefin tuna caught each year.

The bluefin tuna is the largest tuna species in the world, measuring between 6 and 10 feet in length. They can weigh up to 1500 kilograms and live an average of 35 years.

They are predators, seeking schools of fish such as herring, mackerel and eel.