David Clode / Unsplash
For anyone out there who believes dinosaurs went extinct thousands of years ago I invite you to spend a day in Florida where you can run into horseshoe crabs, alligators, saltwater crocodiles, countless birds that look like something you’d see in a cartoon, sharks, and if you’re lucky you might run into the endangered Sawfish.
Actually, you might not have to be super lucky. There are places in the Florida Keys and Everglades where a fishing captain could show you a sawfish when the tides are right just about any day of the year but for regular people, seeing an endangered sawfish is a once-in-a-lifetime occurrence.
These living dinosaurs can grow up to 17-feet and have WILD teeth (saws) on their rostra. A group witnessed three smalltooth sawfish in Melbourne Beach on the Indian River, just an unbelievable sight.
This video was filmed by Michael Alvarez and has been making the local Florida news rounds:
“Never thought I would ever see one of these saw nose fish especially this big and up close like this. The best part is that there were three of them! With a rough measurement, we estimated at least 12 feet long for the one in the video.”
I’ve personally never seen one of these sawfish outside of an aquarium and it’s definitely a goal of mine to spot one in the wild. If you’re wondering what they look like when fishing, here’s a pretty crazy clip from 4 years back of Josh from BlacktipH catching a 17-foot sawfish out of nowhere:
I think, like most people, I spent way too much time each day pondering who has had it best over the past few months. Ultimately, people who live on the water and have a boat are the ones living the dream in life since mid-March. The ability to walk out your back door, fire up the engine, and heat out on the water is a level of freedom that’s unmatched, at least in my mind.
I’ve decided that I need to become much more ambitious in life and work towards being able to have a house on the water, with a dock, and a sick boat. It’s not that I ever expect this strange period of life to happen again soon since it hasn’t occurred in over a hundred years, I just now want to move towards a life where I have water access 24/7/365.