An amateur angler has caught a 9-feet long blue shark off the coast of Cornwall. The monster is being said to be the Britain’s biggest blue shark on record.
John Dine was on a fishing trip along with his three friends when he hooked this monster. The group, from Essex, then reeled the shark and heaved it on board the 30-feet Bite Adventures catamaran, which is owned by Penzance skipper Robin “Chippy” Chapman. Based on the length and girth of the animal, the group calculated its weight to be approximately 256lb. The earlier record of 214 lbs for the shark’s weight was set 58-years ago.
All four friends then lifted the monster up for a photo and then safely returned it back into the sea.
The IUCN Red Book lists blue sharks as Near Threatened species. This creature is found all around the world, and can grow about 13-feet long and 400 lbs in weight. The heaviest blue shark ever recorded was 862lb. The aerodynamic shape and lightness of this animal’s allows it to move “elegantly” across the oceans. It displays countershading like many other sharks. The upper part is an indigo blue tone while the ventral and the sides are white.
It has a long caudal heterocercal fin. The second dorsal fin measures almost half the size of the first and its pectoral fins are unusually long compared to other sharks. Its eyes are large, its teeth are triangular, and it has a conical snout. This species presents slight sexual dimorphism since the female tends to measure little more than 1 meter in comparison with the male.
Only two unprovoked shark attack cases have been reported in the UK waters, according to the International Shark Attack File. In 2016, a total of 84 unprovoked attacks by sharks worldwide were reported, with four being fatal.
“I had a party down for a few days fishing for sharks, as they do every year. They had it in their minds this time that they wanted a big one,” skipper Robin Chapman told the Daily Mirror.
According to Chapman, they “didn’t have to wait long.”
“As soon as they hooked the shark up we knew it was big, it went off like a steam train.”
“After 40 minutes of hard battling, we saw the fish from the bow as it circled the boat once before going off on another surging run.”
“I told John to remember what he saw because if he lost it nobody would believe him. The fish repeated this five or six times but luckily the wire and hook held fast.”
John Richardson from the Plymouth-based Shark Trust has praised the anglers for handling the shark correctly out of water and then putting it back in waters.
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