Man accidentally 'catches' 300 kg shark while fishing

On 26 December, Jason Bragg set out on his boat with his partner and nephew to catch some fish. But instead, he ended up having a close encounter with a potentially dangerous underwater species—a great white shark.

Catch of the day

The trio had gone out to the Kaipara Harbour in the North Island of New Zealand to test some new fishing gear. Bragg's fish finder had indicated that there were some sizeable swimmers in the water, so he set up his GoPro to film his catch of the day. Little did he know that he would end up capturing rare footage of a monstrous shark.

How did it happen? Well, while fishing, Braggs noticed that his hook had caught on to a rather large animal, which he was struggling to pull back. A few moments later, a massive great white shark leaped out of the water! Turns out that the ‘large fish’ the Kiwi fisherman had hooked was actually a shark. He told New Zealand Herald:

I looked over at my fish finder and I said 'get ready guys hear it comes', not knowing it was going to be a great white. The fish finder was unreal, it was like a sea of red.

Then my missus looked at the fish finder and thought 'whoa'! So I got the GoPro set up and suddenly this thing came out of the water.

The shark succeeded at breaking the line and swam away unharmed, and Bragg went home with footage that he will cherish for a lifetime.

Rare encounter

Marine Scientist Clinton Duffy told the publication that this particular shark 'could weigh around 300 kgs' and that this kind of encounter was exceptionally rare. She said:

I've seen the sharks do it quite a lot but we've never been able to get it on camera. This type of footage is very rare. The camera is always pointing the wrong way.

My colleagues will be quite jealous. We've spent years trying to get them on video breaching.