A group of Florida students caught a 14 feet, 700 pound hammerhead shark when they went shark fishing last week off the beaches of Broward County.
Boca Raton angler Viktor Hluben and his friends got more than they bargained for during their recent shark fishing trip off the beaches of Broward County. The group of Florida students was in for a surprise when it encountered a 14 feet, 700 pound hammerhead shark.
The boys were able to finally reel in the monster after a 90-minute fight, according to the Daily Mail.
"We knew we had a giant fish on, we battled it for about an hour and thirty minutes, and when we saw the massive dorsal fin, we knew we hooked a giant shark," Hluben, a student at Florida Atlantic University, and a part of the group called Landshark Fishing, told WPTV.
Hluben and his friends clarified that they never intended to catch and keep the shark. After taking a few pictures as a memorandum of the catch, they pushed the shark back into the ocean and it swam off.
"The only thing I was thinking in my head was pictures, video, quick and get it back in the water," said Hluben.
NY Daily News reported that the marine creature still had a circle hook in him, but it was described as a non-stainless steel hook, which Hluben said would rust out. Florida Sea Grant College Program confirmed this, identifying circle hooks as safer alternatives when practicing catch-and-release fishing because the non-stainless steel variety is able to "deteriorate over time".
A video of the 90-minute fight was uploaded on YouTube and has received almost 460,000 views so far.
Mark Perry of the Florida Oceanographic Society said hammerhead sharks that size are common along the Florida coast. The species prefers to live in warm water that is found along the coastlines. They can be found in tropic and sub tropic waters all over the world. They tend to migrate to cooler waters in the summer months. They prefer to live well below the surface of the water. They eat a variety of foods including small fish, sting rays, small sharks and squid. There are reports that when food is scarce the hammerheads will eat each other as a last resort in order to survive, according to the National Geographic.
