Courtesy: Orlando Princess & Canaveral Princess Deep Sea Fishing
A charter fishing boat got an unexpected surprise when one of its anglers hooked up with what turned out to be a 14-foot long great white shark in approximately 100 feet of water off the coast of Port Canaveral on Monday.
Captain Craig Shaffer, along with 21 passengers and crew members, were fishing for snapper and other reef fish on board the Canaveral Princess approximately 24 miles offshore when one of the clients hooked up with a smaller fish which was then snagged by the monstrous shark.
The team was able to coax the shark to the surface but after circling the boat long enough for a few pictures to be taken, the shark broke free of the undersized tackle by snapping the hook and swam away unharmed.
According to the Canaveral Princess’ Facebook page:
It broke off at the surface and put up a nice fight! It was not boarded on the boat and we were not intentionally fishing for it as we were fishing in 100′ feet of water and would have never guessed this is what would have been reeled up!!
Although Katharine, a great white shark that is equipped with a satellite tracking device of similar size, was recently tracked in that area, it does not appear to be the same shark that was spotted on Monday.
Florida has been a popular place for great white sharks this December. Another pair of great whites, Miss Costa and Teti, that were tagged by the marine conservation and research group, OCEARCH, have “pinged in” in Florida waters in the past three weeks.
Grey Lady, a 12.5-feet, 1,300-pound female, pinged in — or surfaced long enough for the tracking tag to transmit information to the satellite — on Dec. 14 approximately 35 miles offshore of Jacksonville.
Miss Costa, which measured 12.5 feet and weighed in at over 1,600 pounds, appeared headed for the Gulf of Mexico after she was reported in the Dry Tortugas in the Florida Keys on Nov. 29.
Source: WFTV