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12-year-old Campbell Keenan was in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida for his sister’s hockey tournament when the family went out fishing on a charter boat. A few hours later, he’d make global headlines after catching a 10-foot, 450-pound great white shark.
Campbell was fishing with Capt. Paul Paolucci out of Ft. Lauderdale. Campbell would later tell ABC News they’d hoped to catch a sailfish or blackfin tuna. January is the best month of the year to target sailfish in South Florida and the Blackfin Tuna bite is red hot right now from Palm Beach to Key West.
It took him 45 minutes to reel in the 10-foot great white shark. Estimates of the shark were 10-11 feet and 400 to 700 pounds. He called it the ‘fight of a lifetime’ and came within 4 feet of the white shark before tagging it and releasing it.
He told ABC “when you pull the rod up, it was like lifting a 50-pound weight. It was so hard to pull up.”
It’s probably a good thing he didn’t catch a sailfish that day. Fighting a sailfish feels like you are dragging a tarp holding a boulder through the water. When that fish opens its ‘sail’ and begins to swim it is incredibly difficult to reel in.
Because the great white shark is a protected species they tagged it and let it go. Thus they weren’t able to take measurements on the shark but estimated that it was between 10 and 11 feet long and weighed between 400 and 700 pounds.
Campbell’s mother, Colleen Keenan, discussed the wild fight against the shark.
She said “Campbell was doing the reeling and then the first mate was guiding him and telling him how to let the rod go down and then pull it back up and reel as he’s pulling up. And then I was holding on to Campbell because he wasn’t strapped in anything and the great white could have easily just taken him for a ride.”
Remarkably, this was the third time since 2003 that Capt. Paul Paolucci has caught a great white shark fishing off the coast of Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. He was also responsible for another great white caught (in his fleet) on New Year’s Day back in 2020.
The water temperature off the coasts of Florida are coolest this time of year. Many great white sharks migrate south for the Winter before returning to New England for the Summer.
While it isn’t a regular occurrence, white shark sightings aren’t uncommon in Florida this time of year. In fact, a 12ft 4in male named ‘Ironbound’ that weighs 1,189 pounds just ‘pinged’ off the coast of Miami according to the OCEARCH shark tracker.
Kayaker Dragging A GoPro In The Water Discovers A Great White Shark Had Been Eerily Stalking Him
This video below comes from Andy Burnell who runs the crabecam YouTube channel which is dedicated to sharing ‘little glimpses into South Australian marine life.’
In this particular video, he attached a GoPro camera to a line and dragged it behind his kayak while paddling ‘about 1.5 km off the end of Grange Jetty’ in Adelaide. Upon reviewing the footage, he discovered a great white shark was following him for minutes.
There is no evidence he was ever in any danger. In all likelihood, the shark was just curious because there was a very foreign object being dragged through the water mimicking prey. But there is no reason to assume the kayaker was ever in danger.