Hall of Fame golfer Greg Norman is typically the biggest shark around whenever he is on the golf course. When the legend known as “The Shark” recently traded his nine-iron for a rod and reel on the water, however, he definitely met his match.
During a recent fishing trip with Joshua Jorgenson and the crew of the online fishing show ‘BlackTipH,’ Norman hooked into a 14-foot, 7-inch great hammerhead shark off the coast of Palm Beach, Florida. The hammerhead was hooked after eating a 4-foot blacktip shark that the team was originally fighting.
“We hooked a blacktip and all of a sudden this giant hammerhead came flying in on the blacktip,” Norman said in the video which was posted on the BlackTipH Youtube channel. “It was the most incredible scene I’ve ever witnessed.”
Norman estimated the shark weighed around 1,200 pounds based on the measurements taken before it was released.
“Greg fought the shark for nearly an hour with heavy tackle,” Jorgenson said. “The size of this shark was massive, larger than we imagined!”
The IGFA World Record was a 14-foot, 3-inch, 1,280-pound hammerhead caught in Boca Grand Pass in 2004. Current Florida law prohibits removing the protected species from the water, even for the purposes of certifying a possible record.
Both great and smooth hammerheads are listed as “Endangered” by the IUCN Red List due to extreme fishing pressures and their slow rates of reproduction. It is estimated that the worldwide population of hammerheads has declined by nearly 80 percent in the last 25 years.