Caught on camera.
Just when you thought it was safe to GoPro back in the water. A great white shark has been filmed snatching a fish off a line in Cape Cod, marking the first time this behavior has been caught on camera underwater.
“It was so sudden, it wasn’t even a second,” National Geographic photographer Brian Skerry told the publicationof documenting the Jaws-dropping moment.
In the wild clip, a hooked fish is seen trying to wriggle free from a hook when, all of a sudden, a juvenile great white rockets up from the deep and yanks it right off the line.
Skerry had reportedly been tipped off to sharks stealing anglers’ catches — a phenomenon known as depredation — by Cape Cod fishermen who’ve increasingly been victimized by the man in the gray suit.
In many instances, they’d reel in fish with chunks missing, or even just the head.
“There have been more and more sharks hitting fish,” said Hap Farrell, a 45-year veteran of the charter industry based who is based in Orleans, Massachusetts.
The seasoned seadog said he’s personally heard of 50 depredation incidents this past summer, marking a massive uptick from years back, when there’d be only a handful.
Experts credit the trend to the resurgence of the Massachusetts great white population, which is borne aloft by thriving numbers of gray seals.
In general, these apex predatorsare known to head North in the spring and summer in search of prey and cooler waters, and then swim South for the winter when the colder temps return.
To catch the aquatic tax man in the act, Skerry worked with local charter captains to find where depredation was the most concentrated. The photog finally struck gold on June 29 when he filmed the aforementioned fish pilfering, which he analogized to a “loaf of bread” being snatched.
Skerry even felt that the great white intentionally grabbed its quarry from the side to avoid the lure.
“She doesn’t want to get hooked either, you know, or herself,” he told CBS. “Now again, maybe I’m giving them too much credit or reading into it too much, but I do think there’s some decisions being made.”
Along with making waves online, the photographer said he wanted to help people understand that the region has a “recovering population of large predatory sharks, particularly great whites.”
“While a great concern for beachgoers, it is a good thing for the ocean,” he said. “It is a good thing for the planet.”
Coincidentally, great whites aren’t the only apex predators increasingly enjoying the waters off the Northeast.
NY anglers have increasingly reported catching giant bull sharks, tiger sharks and other toothy predators from down south in a trend scientists have attributed to warming waters.
“This year they [bull sharks] exploded,” a local shark fisherman named Justin, who didn’t want his last name published, previously told the Post. “In a month, I got five. These are my first bull sharks ever in New York.”
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