Photo: WTKR News 3
Great white sharks are one of the most widely protected animals on the planet. As apex predators, a healthy great white population steers the health of the entire ocean and by extension, the planet. They provide stability within their ecosystems but they also don’t reproduce very efficiently, meaning without protection, they’d be very easy to overfish.
All these things made a recent story about a group of fishermen in North Carolina’s Outerbanks a peculiar one. Footage of the group wrestling with a 13-foot great white they estimated to be in the range of 1,500 pounds made the rounds on the internet this week.
If you made the assumption that what they were doing must have been illegal — intentionally fishing a great white and reeling it in — you’re not alone. I made the same assumption myself. But it turns out the entire thing was completely legal thanks to specific rules and guidelines.
“In the Atlantic, recreational fishermen who hold the appropriate permits are allowed to intentionally fish for white sharks with rod and reel gear as long as they release the shark immediately without removing the shark from the water and without further harming the shark,” according to the NOAA. ”
They point out that protection of the species in the Atlantic is managed under the 2006 Consolidated Atlantic Highly Migratory Species Fishery Management Plan. Meanwhile, in the Pacific, protection of great whites is under the West Coast HMS Fishery Management Plan, thus the different regulations.
The crew of OBX fishermen, as you’ve guessed by now, were acting within the regulations when they set out to catch a great white — something they’d been planning for two years, they said.
“(There are) certain things that have to line up for that fish to be close enough for you to catch it off the beach,” one of the men told WRAL News. “This is fishing on a whole other level.”
The group reportedly spent at least half an hour wrestling with the shark and reeling it in once it was hooked. The process of releasing it then took less than two minutes.
“This is the first big land based Great White in Hatteras Island history! Thank you to all of my friends involved with this catch! White sharks are mysterious, and beautiful animals. The fight was about 35 minutes. We released this fish as fast as possible. She swam off perfectly, super green,” Sean Luke, one of the fishermen said on Facebook. “Jason Rosenfeld and I have been working on getting this done for a long time. We picked the day and made the first drop with the new rod we just built for this exact purpose. It’s breathtaking seeing a 12 to 13-foot, 1,400 to 1,800-pound animal jump out of the water on the hook set.”
