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Friday, June 19, 2009

Panic That's a Lot of Goddamned Shark

Posted by Paul Constant on Fri, Jun 19, 2009 at 1:07 PM

An Irishman caught a half-ton shark with a rod and line (?!?) yesterday. The shark is so huge—over twelve feet long!—that it had to be moved by forklift. There is a photo of the deadly, enormous thing over at Swim At Your Own Risk.

Comments (14) RSS

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That's huuuuuuuueg.

I think the 'line and rod' the guy used was the boat-mounted type usually set up for Marlins (which are by themselves big fish, but nowhere NEAR that big).

Posted by Shini on June 19, 2009 at 1:37 PM

Sad. Those really need to stay in the ocean.

Posted by sepiolida on June 19, 2009 at 1:55 PM

That's nowhere near as big as they can get. Just the biggest one caught on a rod and reel is all.

Posted by Fifty-Two-Eighty

on June 19, 2009 at 2:02 PM

fishing for large sharks is a bit like hunting large terrestrial predators. only assholes do it.

Posted by onion on June 19, 2009 at 2:09 PM

Poor jelly faced beastie! Doesn't look so regal out of the water.
:-(

Posted by NumberOne on June 19, 2009 at 2:20 PM

Makes me think of End of the Line: http://endoftheline.com/

The movie was preachy at times, but explains a lot of the insanity currently going on in our oceans.

Posted by Trevor on June 19, 2009 at 2:22 PM

how is this still considered acceptable behavior? IS this still considered acceptable behavior?

Posted by Pepper St. Tort Reform on June 19, 2009 at 2:23 PM

I didn't think people in Clare were interesting enough for blood sports.

Posted by duckgirlie on June 19, 2009 at 2:25 PM

Why does the ocean hate us so much?

Posted by Baconcat on June 19, 2009 at 2:31 PM

Thanks Paul for giving me a new site to visit whenever I have the hiccups and want to scare the bejeezus out of myself. Thanks a lot.

Posted by Luckier on June 19, 2009 at 2:34 PM

I hope he ate it. That makes catching it only slightly less repugnant.

Posted by alex on June 19, 2009 at 2:35 PM

Pictures like this are what make me smile just a little on the inside when I hear about shark attacks. As a species, the human race has it coming.

Now off I go to protest the fish-flingers!

Posted by schmacky on June 19, 2009 at 3:06 PM

Just to double down on the human-stupid, the shark in question looks to me like a basking shark: described by Wikipedia as "a slow-moving and generally harmless filter-feeder."

It eats plankton, basically. No threat to anything more than a few millimeters wide. And its conservation status is 'vulnerable.'

Nice going, pole guy.

Posted by tim b on June 19, 2009 at 4:11 PM

You can't eat shark meat.

I think that's a sixgill shark. It would have bit the line, but is harmless to humans because we aren't small fish.

Humans kill 70 million sharks a year for their fins. I think it's hillarious that we are scared of them when they barely kill a couple of people a year.

Posted by Toasterhedgehog on June 21, 2009 at 7:44 AM