Clint Simek and Capt. Tom Rostron Jr. were fishing about 35 miles off the coast of New Jersey when they hooked the 8-foot long predator. The shark began jumping out of the water on its own after it was hooked, reaching as high as 15 feet, one of the fishermen told MyFoxNy.com over the telephone.
The shark landed in the boat on the fifth jump, but the two men were able to tie the animal down with a rope.
The shark "screamed" and flopped around for about two hours before it died, said one fisherman.
The fisherman say they plan to cut up the shark and give it to friends and family.
Mako sharks have long, slender bodies and swim incredibly fast. They are also known for jumping out of the ocean, possibly to search for food above the water's surface.
In the village of Tan-awan, on the southern Philippines island of Cebu, whale shark sightings along the shore have become a prime tourist attraction.
It was not always this way.
Giant whale sharks typically swim through warm, tropical waters alone. Within the past couple of years, the gentle sea giants have been drawn to Tan-awan's coastlines in large numbers by fishermen who hand-feed the sharks with krill.
NFL superagent Drew Rosenhaus is not your normal dude. He became a registered agent at 22 years old, gave one of the greatest, least revealing interviews in the history of sports and, apparently, enjoys wrestling sharks.
This video, which Rosenhaus posted on his Twitter a few days ago, shows him risking limb and life for a cheap thrill. What else would you expect from a guy who represents Chad Johnson and Terrell Owens?
It's as ridiculous as it sounds. However, it may be absolutely brilliant.
If you haven't heard about "Sharknado" yet, an original SyFy disaster movie debuting tonight at 9 p.m., you're missing out.
The concept is simple. Killer sharks + deadly tornadoes = Sharknado.
We're not sure what the best part of this is: that SyFy thought this up, that 90210's Ian Ziering is slicing through great whites with a chainsaw like butter, or that Tara Reid is in this made-for-TV horror film.
IF YOU SPOTTED a group of small sharks in danger of losing their lives in a shrinking pool on a beach, what would you do?
For Jeff Williams and his family, there was no question: they would do their best to save them. Together, the family worked over the course of 35 minutes late last week to save the lives of 30 sharks who were in danger of dying on a beach in Rush.
They removed the sharks from a pool on the beach that was rapidly drying out, and brought them to safety in the sea.
Williams told TheJournal.ie that it all began when he went out to walk his dog at about 7.15am that day. A local woman, Colette Connolly, told him about the young sharks, which had been spotted in a pool about an hour earlier by local man Paul Carroll.
Williams and Connolly knew that the pool the sharks were in was drying out quickly.
“We had to think very fast,” said Williams. He ran back to his house, which was about 1km away, and got his jeep and a large plastic container. The beach isn’t usually accessible by car, but he knew of a section that he could drive through, and travelled onto the beach towards the pool.
Rescue
The Rush man had his family – father Jim Williams, wife Hazel Williams, and children Harley and Beau – with him in the jeep.
“We probably only had 35 minutes before the pool dried out to get them in the bucket,” said Williams, who believes the sharks were a form of tope shark. They placed the wriggling and unhappy sharks into the container two or three at a time, loaded the box into the jeep and then raced to the water line to release them.
“As much as they’re sharks, they’re fine,” Williams said of handling the creatures. It was only when they were taken out of the water that they were not happy, and he felt they did not pose a danger to his family.
It wasn’t worrying like that – they weren’t going for anybody. They wouldn’t touch anyone.
Williams said they were lucky to have been able to rescue the sharks. “It was a great experience… it was amazing. I’ve been living on that beach all my life and never come across something like that before. They normally stay out deep.”
“It was just kind of a freak thing,” said Williams. “You would have to rescue them. I knew they’d be dead – the water was well dried out and another 15 minutes later they would have [been dead].”
Here they are: Don't wear "yummy yellow" and don't play with a dog, she says.
"Don't wear yummy yellow because sharks have very bad vision, but they can spot yellow and orange. So we're always told don't wear yummy yellow. Don't play with a dog before going in the water because dogs have a much stronger smell and that smell rubs off on you and sharks can detect that much further away."
Drury says she likes to wear dark blue, green or black when it comes to her swimsuit.
Between October 2011 and July 2012, great white sharks killed five people in attacks in the area.
In response, a company called Shark Attack Mitigation Systems (SAMS) and University of Western Australia scientists have been working to protect swimmers, surfers and divers from getting chomped on with a line of shark-deterring wet suits. After two years of research and development, the suits went on sale this week.
One version, "Elude,"camouflages the wearer in the water, based on the recent discovery that sharks seem to be color blind. The other, "Diverter," aims to repel sharks with high-contrast black and white bands, a natural signal the company says tells sharks you aren't the delicious snack they're looking for.
"Many animals in biology are repelled by noxious animals – prey that provide a signal that somehow says ‘Don't eat me’ – and that has been manifest in a striped pattern," UWA professor Shaun Collin told the Guardian.
The suits' designs were tested with tiger sharks off the coast of Western Australia, but not with humans inside them. More testing is scheduled for this summer, but the especially brave (or shark-prone) can order a suit now. When you're talking life or limb, $495 isn't that pricey.
One of the most ambitious expeditions ever to tag great white sharks will set sail tomorrow (July 30) off Cape Cod, Mass. The researchers hope to tag as many as 20 of the enormous sharks, about which very little is known.
The project is expected to be the largest shark-tagging mission in U.S. history, according to the nonprofit shark research group OCEARCH, which is leading the mission along with the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI). The effort is part of an initiative to better understand the animals and to inform the public about the importance of sharks, which serve as top predators and are vital for the proper function of ocean food webs, said WHOI researcher Simon Thorrold. As many as 100 million sharks are killed per year due to both legal and illegal fishing, a recent study found.
"Given how much interest there is in great white sharks, we are still scientifically trying to find out the very basics," Thorrold said.
Tagging great whites
Aboard a vessel known as the M/V OCEARCH, researchers will cast lines for great white sharks, using barbless hooks designed to minimize harm to the animals, Thorrold said. After the shark is reeled in, a special platform powered by a hydraulic lift is then raised up underneath the shark, allowing scientists to attach a GPS tag to the animal's dorsal fin and perform a variety of tests on the animal, Thorrold told LiveScience's OurAmazingPlanet. [Video of Great White Shark Tagging]
Scientists have to work quickly to minimize the stress they cause the sharks, Thorrold said. During the 15 minutes the researchers spend with each shark, the animal's gills are bathed in saltwater to prevent the shark from suffocating.
"It's like a NASCAR pit crew," Thorrold said. Perhaps surprisingly, the sharks don't seem to put up much of a fight, and "really chill out on the platform," he added.
During the expedition, which runs from July 30 to Aug. 29, the scientists will take blood and tissue samples from each of the sharks they catch to learn more about the animals' health and diet. The GPS tags will allow scientists to see where the sharks are going, as well as the temperature of the water and the depths of their dives, Thorrold said.
Understanding sharks
Recent data derived from the tagging of great white sharks has shown that the animals follow two basic routes. Some of the sharks tend to stay along the East Coast and linger not far from the shore, Thorrold said. But others set out into the Atlantic Ocean, before making a wide circle and heading toward Bermuda. Previously, it wasn't known that sharks wandered far from shore, Thorrold said, adding, "That really blew our minds."
The data will be used in as many as a dozen studies and will help scientists understand the sharks' behaviors. More and more great white sharks have been spotted off Cape Cod in recent years — a development that has coincided with the rebound of populations of gray seals, upon which the sharks feed, Thorrold said.
Earlier this year, OCEARCH scientists tagged a shark named Lydia off the coast of Florida. Lydia and other sharks can be tracked at the Global Shark Tracker.
Discovery Channel's wildly popular television series about one of the oceans' most powerful predators returns on Sunday, August 4, for its 26th season.
You can check out this year's episode lineup here.
In the meantime, enjoy these shark-y photos to get you even more pumped for the Shark Week premiere.
Veteran "Shark Week" filmmaker Jeff Kurr and crew capture Great White Sharks on camera in New Zealand.
Photographer Andrew Casagrande gets close to clamping a fin cam onto a Great White.
A Great White is seen up-close in New Zealand.
This special Sharkcam locks onto the signal emitted from a shark's tag and tracks its every move.
A large Great White shark cruises past the underwater cameraman at Guadalupe Island off the coast of Mexico.
But run-ins between humans and sharks do happen — whether by accident or provoked.
Discovery Channel's "Shark Week," which premieres Sunday, August 4, provides riveting accounts of swimmers who came face-to-face with one of the oceans' greatest predators.
All of them lived to tell their stories, but not without injuries.
Heather Boswell was 19 years old when she was attacked by a Great White Shark while swimming off the coast of Chile.
Boswell, who was working on a research ship, was taking a break with some of her crew members when the shark grabbed both of her legs and pulled her under the water. The horrifying scene was all captured on home video.
An Australian fisherman crawled inside a gutted shark, shoved his hands through its gills, and pretended to stab the creature in between the eyes for a memorable photo.
The image was sent to an Australian radio station, 3AW, where hosts John Burns and Ross Stevenson jokingly crowned it "photo of the year."
The timing of the photo couldn't be better. Discovery Channel's highly anticipated Shark Week kicks off Sunday night.
For more about the "photo of the year," listen to the video below:
Discovery Channel kicked off Shark Week on Sunday with a fake documentary about the Great White shark's prehistoric ancestor, megalodon.
Megalodons did at exist at one point. But the powerful ocean predator went extinct 2 million years ago.
The "documentary"— with fictional scripts and phony research — asks us to consider the possibility that megalodon is still roaming the oceans and toppling fishing boats. It upset many Discovery Channel viewers who were briefly convinced that megalodon is terrorizing humans today.
The ancient shark is long gone; however, the 50-ton beast could do some serious damage when it ruled the prehistoric seas.
Last year, the Shark Week team built a full-size model of megalodon, to see if it could hunt and kill giant whales.
Discovery Channel is standing by its fake documentary about an ancient giant shark, Megalodon. The two-hour special, called "Megalodon: The Monster Shark Lives," aired on Sunday night to kick off Shark Week.
Megalodon, a 60-foot-long relative of the Great White shark, is real. However, the creature went extinct 2 million years ago. The mockumentary used fake footage and storylines to convince viewers that Megalodon still roams the oceans today.
A disclaimer, confirming that the show was fantasy rather than fact, only ran at the end of the program.
It read: "None of the institutions or agencies that appear in the film are affiliated with it in any way, nor have approved its contents. Though certain events and characters in this film have been dramatized, sightings of 'Submarine' continue to this day. Megalodon was a real shark. Legends of giant sharks persist all over the world. There is still debate about what they might be.
Michael Sorensen, the executive producer of Shark Week, defends the fake episode. He told FoxNews: “With a whole week of Shark Week programming ahead of us, we wanted to explore the possibilities of Megalodon. It’s one of the most debated shark discussions of all time, can Megalodon exist today? It’s Ultimate Shark Week fantasy. The stories have been out there for years and with 95% of the ocean unexplored, who really knows?”
The Discovery Channel's Shark Week got off to a less-than-stellar start this weekend with a two-hour piece devoted to Megalodon, a prehistoric giant shark that grew up to 60 feet (18 meters) long and had jaws powerful enough to crush an automobile. The only problem is that the show suggested these animals still exist, which is definitely not the case. Up to 70 percent of the audience may now think that Megalodon is not extinct, according to a poll from the Discovery Channel.
That's too bad, because there are tons of bizarre and completely true facts about sharks that are more arresting than fiction. And although humans have always been fascinated by sharks, we know surprisingly little about them.
One thing we do know is how important sharks are to ocean ecosystems, where they keep populations of midlevel predators in check; when they disappear, changes can ripple through the food web and even affect the presence of marine plants, studies have shown. But as many as 100 million sharks are killed each year for their meat and their fins, which are made into shark fin soup. This dish is considered a delicacy and is prized in China, despite evidence that it can contain high levels of toxins like mercury. [On the Brink: A Gallery of Wild Sharks]
Conservationists hope that if people knew more about how awesome sharks are, perhaps they'd be less likely to condone the killing of these creatures, which have been around for about 420 million years and have changed little since then.
On that note, here are some awesomely weird — and completely true — facts about sharks to sink your teeth into:
1.Even if sharks could brush their teeth, they wouldn't need to: Shark teeth are covered in fluoride, making them cavity-resistant. One 2012 study published in the Journal of Structural Biology found that sharks' enamel is made up of a chemical called fluoroapatite, which is resistant to acid produced by bacteria. This, combined with the fact that most sharks replace their teeth throughout their lives, means that sharks have excellent dental health. A gold star for you at your next dentist appointment, sharks!
2.The cookiecutter shark can take ice-cream-scoop-shaped bites out of other sharks, including great whites, which are many times larger. They also have been known to bite holes in cables and other materials used by U.S. Navy submarines, which has necessitated a switch to a fiberglass, bite-proof coating. [More Weird Shark Facts]
3.The skin of a female shark is much thicker than that of a male because males bite females during mating, said David Shiffman, a shark researcher and doctoral student at the University of Miami.
4. The Greenland shark, the slowest-moving fish ever recorded, has been found with reindeer, polar bears and fast-moving seals in its stomach, Shiffman told LiveScience. It's thought that Greenland sharks prey upon sleeping seals, which snooze in the water to avoid polar bears.
5. Lantern sharks can glow to disguise themselves in the deep ocean, emitting the same amount of light as that which is filtering down from above; this way, they don't create a "shadow."Velvet belly lantern sharks have glowing spines that may be used to ward off predators.
It's Shark Week, so we wanted to tell you about some of our favorite sharks.
My favorite is the cat-sized shark in the picture above — it doesn't look that intimidating, but its bite is quite fearsome.
It uses its razor-sharp teeth to take a huge chunk out of anything it can find — including other sharks, fish, dolphins, humans, and even electrical equipment in the ocean. The distinctive bites have been found in all kinds of fish and other sharks, and even a human has been attacked by the little guys.
The cookiecutter shark bites a victim, then with a circular sawing motion extracts a clump of flesh. Here's what the bites look like:
The fearless cookie-cutters have even disabled the most dangerous ocean creature of all—the nuclear submarine. They attacked exposed soft areas including electrical cables and rubber sonar domes. In several cases, the attacks effectively blinded the subs, forcing them back to base for repairs. They later returned, fitted with fibreglass coverings.
The attacks happened in the 1970s and the problem seems to have been taken care of, though in several cases the sharks did enough damage to the vessel's sonar equipment that the oils inside that transmit sound would leak out of the ship and break the equipment — the subs could no longer see what was around them, according to the ReefQuest Centre for Shark Research.
Nuclear subs obviously aren't all that tasty, but the sharks seem to bite just about anything — even research equipment in the ocean.
New York's Metropolitan Transportation Authority will not investigate the mysterious appearance of a dead shark on a Queens-bound N subway train, a spokesperson said today.
Yes, folks this morning we removed a shark from an N train at Ditmars Blvd.....and no, we're not investigating how it got there. :) #MTA
"YES! The evidence for Megalodon can't be ignored. This monster shark lives," the majority of responders agreed.
(It's not clear whether these viewers are aware that the "evidence" presented in the film, including footage and interviews with scientists, was fake).
The rest of viewers see eye-to-eye with scientists: Megalodon is dead. The shark went extinct roughly 2 million years ago after ruling the seas for about 15 million years.
In spite of Discovery's partly-fictionalized documentary— which asks viewers to believe that Megalodon is still alive — most scientists agree that Megalodon went extinct roughly 2 million years ago.
Consider us lucky.
With 276 teeth, each 7 inches in length, the film calls Megalodon's mouth "one of nature's most deadly creations."
Megalodon could crush a whale's skull, clamping down on its victim with more than 35,000 pounds of force, according to the film.
Below is a screen grab of a fossilized tooth from a Great White shark (left) compared to a fossilized tooth from Megalodon:
And here's a reconstruction of a Megalodon jaw, made by American zoologist Bashford Dean in 1909. An entire man can fit comfortably inside!
Although immersive marketing stunts are the new normal, a dead shark is probably too dark even for the makers of "Sharknado."
Even speculations about "Shark Week," which is currently airing on The Discovery Channel, were in jest, Discovery executive vice president of PR Laurie Goldberg commented on the strange occurrence.
"Shark Week is all about conversation, so it deeply saddens us that someone would think that this was funny or in any way connected to our celebration of sharks," she said.
Bloomberg Businessweek's second annual "interview issue" hits newsstands Friday, offering Q&As with bigwigs like Bill Gates, Barbara Walters, Rand Paul, and the Winklevoss twins.
But the best tidbit from the issue comes from this bizarre exchange with UPS CEO Scott Davis.
Have you shipped live sharks? Yeah. We probably ship a little bit of everything, whales, you name it. We’ve got to be able to handle any precious commodity, and health care is obviously the area we’re moving into. So while we’re doing sharks and lobsters and whales, at the same time people are waiting on the operating table for some things that we’ve got to get to them.
Isn’t that dangerous, shipping live sharks? It can be. You’ve got to have experts help you.
How do you ship a live whale? It’s a big container.
1.Even if sharks could brush their teeth, they wouldn't need to: Shark teeth are covered in fluoride, making them cavity-resistant. One 2012 study published in the Journal of Structural Biology found that sharks' enamel is made up of a chemical called fluoroapatite, which is resistant to acid produced by bacteria. This, combined with the fact that most sharks replace their teeth throughout their lives, means that sharks have excellent dental health. A gold star for you at your next dentist appointment, sharks!
Bloomberg Businessweek's