Jeff Bratcher of Yukon, Okla. was taking his family out for a walk at the Harborwalk Village in Destin, Fla., just steps from AJ's restaurant and the newly-opened Margaritaville earlier this month, when he came upon a sight he almost couldn't believe.

Deck hands from a charter fishing boat called the Phoenix were removing dead pups from the corpse of a 13-foot, 830-pound great hammerhead shark caught on the boat's latest charter.

Bratcher said he and several family members were appalled as pup after pup -- 34 of them in total -- were removed from the dead shark and tossed into a trash can. The shark's fins had been cut off, and Bratcher said he saw what looked like bullet or spear holes in the shark's body.

"My oldest son, he said 'Dad, this is wrong,' and I said I didn't know what was endangered or what wasn't," Bratcher said. "We're from Oklahoma, all we know about is catching catfish.

"I was just in awe, but the more I got to think about it, I thought 'this ain't right.'"

Bratcher filmed the scene with his phone and posted the clip to YouTube, in a video that has been watched more than 275,000 times. He also shared the video with AL.com and it is embedded above. Bratcher said he's been contacted by people from all over the world concerned about what the video depicts.

"I have people telling me to take the video off, but we need to let people know what it is," Bratcher said.

Great hammerheads are not commonly used for meat in the United States, but the fins are prized for making shark fin soup, primarily in other parts of the world. The fins had been removed from this shark. Nine U.S. states prohibit the possession or sale of shark fins, but Florida is not among them.

"You hear me ask on the video 'What are you going to do with these?'," Bratcher said. "He would never answer, he was just throwing (the pups) in the trash can."

The charter boat company posted a message with photos of the shark and the anglers who caught it to its Facebook page, but the post and photos were removed after several negative comments about the catch.

34 pups removed from hammerhead shark landed in Destin, Fla. 4 Gallery: 34 pups removed from hammerhead shark landed in Destin, Fla.

Great hammerheads are listed as endangered on the International Union for Conservation of Nature's "Red List," but are not protected by the U.S. government under the Endangered Species Act.

Conservation groups Wild Earth Guardians and the Natural Resources Defense Council had lobbied for great hammerheads to gain protection under the ESA, but that petition was denied last year, though the evaluating team from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration expressed "significant uncertainty, due to data limitations from the best available information."

Great hammerheads are protected by Florida state law, and it is prohibited to land the species in Florida state waters. The captain of the Phoenix was not immediately available for comment, but had posted on the deleted Facebook status that the catch was made in international waters, more than nine miles offshore.

The great hammerhead is a mostly solitary species with a large range, according to the NOAA species profile, making stock assessments difficult. The NOAA threat assessment did note that the great hammerhead shows significantly more evidence of stress and mortality from being caught by hook and line than species like the bull sharks, lemon sharks or tiger sharks. Tagged great hammerheads also show a very low recapture rate, leading some scientists to believe that few great hammerheads survive the catch and release process.

Female great hammerheads are typically larger than males and give live birth to litters of 6 to 42 pups approximately every two years after reaching maturity. It is believed that a low percentage of those pups survive to adulthood. The lifespan of the species can be up to 40 years.