Epic mako loses shark brawl in Atlantic

The shark battled for 40 minutes before angler Jamie Doucette, 28, of Wedgeport, Nova Scotia, saw its enormousness. “She felt pretty big,” he recalls, “but it wasn’t until she started pulling the boat off course that I started to worry.”

In a scene reminiscent of “Jaws,” the fish tugged the boat sideways during the Yarmouth Shark Scramble off Nova Scotia in August.

It surged to the surface near the bow, a mako with a broad head and rows of razor teeth, chewing through steel leader.

Doucette reeled it in and other anglers wrapped it in ropes as the shark chewed through the knots. One loop circled its torso, the other the tail; one man leaned over the boat and slit its throat as Jaws thrashed for something to bite. It died 20 minutes later.

The fishermen estimated that it weighed up to 500 pounds, big enough to take the $3,000 in prize money, but when a forklift unloaded it, the fish weighed 1,082 pounds, a potential Canadian record.

“I felt bad that we caught her at the prime of her reproductive cycle,” says Doucette. “When they get to be this massive they call them queens of the sea. I would have let her go if I had been by myself, but it’s different when you have four or five other guys on the boat. You’ve got to win.”

--Charles Duhigg