It's a great, concise read. It's a shame the editor was an idiot and gave it the "watery grave" headline on the webpage itself.

A group of bull sharks lived for 17 years in a lake by a golf course’s 14th hole.

Bull sharks can be found in warm coastal waters the world over. These stout sharks can reach 11 to 13 feet in length and weigh upward of 500 pounds. They are one of the few shark species that can tolerate a wide range of salinities, a trait that allows them to venture into freshwater and brackish habitats such as rivers, estuaries and lagoons.

Unfortunately, this impressive adaptation often puts the sharks in close quarters with humans, one of the many reasons bull sharks are responsible for dozens of documented fatal attacks on humans.

If most sharks were to enter a freshwater environment, their internal salt levels would become diluted and they would die. But bull sharks have specially adapted kidneys and rectal glands that work together to recycle and retain the salt in their bodies.

Freshwater and brackish habitats provide young bull sharks a place to grow up without the threat of predation from larger sharks. Once they’ve reached maturity, however, bull sharks usually head to the sea, where larger prey and breeding opportunities abound. That the Carbrook shark population did not grow during their time in the golf course offered further evidence that the species prefers to breed in saltier environments.

While scientists have long known that bull sharks have the means to move between fresh and saltwater environments, no one knows if these sharks could spend their entire lives in freshwater.

Research suggests bull sharks can live about 30 years, and the Carbrook group survived in the golf course’s lake for 17 years. That suggests there is “no upper limit” to how long these sharks can spend in low-salinity environments, said Vincent Raoult, a postdoctoral researcher at Deakin University in Australia who was not involved in the new study.