In this heated shark encounter, any normal, level-headed man would’ve just cut the line and let the shark swim away with his spear and the fish that he’d just shot. But Tim Van Beelen is not a normal man. Instead, he engaged this extremely agitated dusky shark in a ‘Tug of War’ match, ultimately losing his fish to the shark. If you’re wondering what kind of fish that was that he shot before the shark showed up it’s a Permit. A highly sought after fish amongst the flyfishing community, and one that looks similar to a Pompano.
This all went down last Sunday when Tim Van Beelen was spearfishing in Coral Bay off Western Australia with a group of like-minded spearfishermen dedicated to ‘froth everything aquatic‘. It’s hard to make out what Tim was saying while battling the dusky shark but it’s fairly clear that this Aussie bro was cursing up a storm while fighting for his fish.
The dusky shark can be found from Massachusetts on down to Brazil. From Sierra Leone to Morocco to Japan, and on down to Australia. Though, I just learned that that mitochondrial DNA suggests the Australian and Indonesian dusky sharks constitute a distinct population separate from its brethren across the planet.
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This is a species that can literally be found all across the globe in warm-temperate/tropical seas, and it’s also debatably the most sought after species of shark for China’s beloved shark fin soup, and one that very much needs protecting. It’s listed as ‘Near Threatened’ worldwide by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, and it’s listed as ‘Vulnerable’ in the Atlantic waters off the United States and in the Gulf of Mexico…Apparently, our fishermen have been ravaging this species at a clip that’s faster than the rest of the planet.
These sharks can get pretty huge, and to learn more about that you can CLICK HERE to head on over to GrindTV.