A family vacation in Florida took an unexpected turn when they caught a giant great white shark on a fishing trip.
North Dakota locals were vacationing in Fort Lauderdale, Florida when they went on a shark fishing trip with Good Hit Sport Fishing and encountered the most fearsome shark of them all.
“Best Day Ever!” In a clip from local news station WSVN, one of the family’s children can be heard showing off the large white train behind the boat.
“All of a sudden when it hit that one rod, it just hit and took off,” Shaun Jacobson, a fishing trip member, told WSVN. “So we knew it was something big.”
Great white sharks are large, predatory sharks found throughout the world, although they often frequent temperate coasts. They can grow up to 20 feet long and weigh up to 5,000 pounds, although they rarely reach this size.
Florida is the hotspot for shark attacks in the US, but even then, attacks are very rare.
In 2022, Florida had 16 cases of unprovoked shark attacks, accounting for 39 percent of the total U.S. attacks and 28 percent of unprovoked bites worldwide. None of the Florida attacks proved fatal, although five people were reported to have died from shark attacks worldwide in 2022, according to the International Shark Attack File (ISAF), maintained by the Florida Museum of Natural History.
The odds of being killed by a shark are about 1 in 4.3 million, which means you’re about 300 times more likely to die from sun or heat exposure than from a shark attack.
The family tumbled the shark to the boat after about 40 minutes of dragging.
“We took turns left and right turns, probably what, 20-30 cranks, and then it was the next guy’s turn,” Jacobson said.
Catching great white sharks is rare.
“I’ve been doing this full-time as a captain for 20 years,” boat captain Adam Reckert told WSVN. “This is the second one I’ve landed. The last was about 15 years ago.”
Despite the rarity of great white sharks being reeled in by fishermen, the same thing happened just days ago, March 6, in Orange Beach, Alabama, when two fishing guides reeled in an 11-foot great white shark.
Great whites are listed as “Vulnerable” on the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List. Populations are believed to have declined by 30 to 49 percent over the past hundred years. The biggest threats include plastic pollution, chemical pollution and overfishing, both intentional and by-catch in gear designed to catch other species.
“Big fish – including sharks – are more popular with anglers, especially those looking for trophies. As a result, many of the great white sharks have been fished out,” Joshua Moyer, a white shark teeth authority with affiliates with Yale University and the Atlantic Shark Institute, previously said news week. “While the great white shark population in North America is slowly recovering due to conservation efforts aimed at protecting them and their prey, this is a slow-growing shark.”
After the family took their photos of the behemoth, the hapless Fort Lauderdale shark was tagged, released and returned to the ocean.
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