Two fishermen off the coast of Cornwall in Britain caught the largest shark ever seen in British waters with just a fishing rod. All that was missing was Spielberg on board and they would have been in the middle of a Jaws remake.
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A mixture of excitement and fear
Seeing that an unusual guest was at the end of the line, Wayne Comben and Graeme Pullen decided to take out their cameras, including an underwater one. For an hour and a half, they fought with the animal to get its head out of the water. When they realised that it was a shark, a mixture of excitement and fear was felt, as can be seen in the footage, and one can imagine that they were about to do the fishing of their lives!
Once it surfaced, the giant shark could not be brought onto the boat due to a lack of space. Pullen then, under the eye of the camera immortalising the moment, removed the hook from the terror’s mouth before releasing it. He explained, according to The Telegraph:
I've never seen anything like it in 40 years of sea fishing. It was really like Jaws. The shark was going completely crazy. If someone had been in the water at the time, they would have been eaten.
It was at least ten feet long and 250 kg. Even if we had more men on board, we would have needed a bigger boat to bring it in. We would have capsized.
The other fisherman on board, completely shocked by the catch, confided:
I fought with the fish, I lost all my strength and my adrenaline was at its peak.
Cornish waters are home to an increasing number of sharks, which, due to overfishing in the Atlantic, are no longer able to find food for themselves. The previous record off the north coast was in 1993 with a 225 kg shark, says marine species expert Dr Phil Williams, who praised the achievement:
The shark is huge. I've never seen anything like it.
