A charter fishing company and its clients were awestruck after they caught a rare, 13-foot hammerhead shark during a trip off the coast of the Florida Panhandle. The company claimed the “monster” was the biggest shark it had reeled in.
The incredible catch was caught on camera before the shark was safely released back into the water.
Jack Moran, co-owner of Navarre Beach Shark Fishing (NBSF), told The Epoch Times that Kerry Gulliksen and Tanner Piehl were running the charter that caught the rare beast. The group was out fishing from the shoreline between 7 p.m. and 1 a.m. on July 31.
Moran was incredulous the first time he saw the hammerhead. “[I] didn’t want to get ahead of myself when I first saw it by making any claims about size or species,” he said. “Tanner was just shocked, because neither of us had seen one that big.”
Clients didn’t expect to catch something of that size and thus were “super excited,” said Moran, adding that hammerheads ranging between 8 and 9 feet in length are more common off the Florida Panhandle; but a hammerhead over 12 feet long is “rare.”
“We got it released within a minute,” said Moran.
Given the inexhaustible fighting power of the hammerhead shark, Moran told The Epoch Times that he advises all fishing crews to follow the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission’s (FWC) rules and regulations for dealing with this species.
