Fishermen Chasing Tuna Find Themselves Engulfed By A Massive Shark Feeding Frenzy In Louisiana

shark feeding frenzy

iStockphoto / Martin Voeller


Venice, Louisiana is one of the best fishing destinations on planet earth. It’s a sportsman’s paradise that offers bayou-style fishing for trophy redfish and speckled sea trout inshore and offshore water gets deep in a hurry and pelagics can be caught.

Venice, Louisiana is easily the best place in the Gulf of Mexico to fish for yellowfin tuna. The nearby oil rigs off structure for baitfish to stay close to as protection from predators which in turn leads to large schools of baitfish that bring in predators like sharks and tuna.

A crew of fishermen in Venice, Louisiana were chasing after yellowfin tuna recently when they suddenly found their boat engulfed by a shark feeding frenzy. They thought they were chasing the ‘boiling water’ of tuna who get so frenzied feeding on the surface the water looks like it’s boiling.

But it wasn’t tuna. Within in an instant, they realized their boat was engulfed by a shark feeding frenzy with hundreds upon hundreds of sharks feeding on menhaden in every direction.

How Did This Louisiana Shark Feeding Frenzy Happen?

Sharks are clever predators. Most apex predators make it to the top of the food chain for a reason.

In this instance, there is a large ‘bait ball’ of small bait fish down below. What we can’t see is there are also hundreds if not thousands of sharks below the surface corralling the bait ball like cowboys driving cattle.

The predators underneath the bait fish and on the sides keep the ‘bait ball’ of fish condensed. This makes for easy pickings as the sharks can then slip through the enormous school of fish with ease and snipe off meals with every bite.

This is a scenario a SCUBA diver would never want to be in the middle of. However, they were perfectly safe in the boat all along even if that shark feeding frenzy seemed a little spooky from the surface.

What makes this particular shark feeding frenzy so intriguing is there were no shrimping boats in the area.

A lot of times these large schools of sharks will follow shrimp trawlers (boats). They hang behind the boats to snipe off the ‘by catch’ when shrimpers pull in their nets to keep the shrimp and throw back fish.

Here’s what that looks like:

Presumably, this massive school of sharks had been following the bait ball for a while befor this shark feeding frenzy was triggered.

According to USA Today, this shark feeding frenzy was so wild the school of sharks was knocking water into the fishing boat.