Shark hunters in the Far East reported nabbing the beast behind a string of attacks in the region last month, RIA-Novosti said Monday.
But scientists said the captured 2.5-meter-long cartilaginous fish is a salmon shark, which rarely attack humans, and noted that several different sharks could have gone on the rampage that injured three people.
Denis Udovenko, 25, had both his hands bitten off and his legs mutilated while swimming in Telyakovsky Bay. He is undergoing treatment in South Korea. Two others — Valery Sidorovich, 16, and an unidentified 26-year-old man — suffered light injuries when they were attacked near Vladivostok.
Local authorities commissioned a flotilla of 19 vessels and more than 60 fishermen, rescuers and ichthyologists to catch the shark. The hunters spotted two large sharks on Saturday, but only managed to hook one.
Last week, photographs circulated of a giant shark allegedly caught by local fishermen, but they were revealed to have been taken on Sakhalin in 2007.
Correction: An earlier version of this article incorrectly identified the shark as a member of the Clupeidae family. The salmon shark belongs to the Lamnidae family.