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HUNTINGTON BEACH — A fisherman may have caught the largest mako shark ever recorded off the shores of Huntington Beach.
Jason Johnston, a fisherman from Mesquite, Texas, charted a boat Monday out of California with a group of fisherman. About 15 miles offshore, Johnston's bait of ground sardines and mackerel snagged a 1,323-pound mako shark.
Reeling the 12-foot-long shark in took Johnston more than two hours and a quarter mile of line. When he did get the shark ashore, he got a close-up look of the huge shark, which was 8 feet in circumference. According to KABC, a certified weigh master said the shark outweighed the largest mako shark on record by more than 100 pounds.
The International Game Fish Association has yet to certify the catch.
Two videographers for an outdoor show, "Jim Shockey's The Professionals," were aboard the boat when Johnston caught the shark, the LA Times reported. The episode is supposed to air at a later date.
The catch has upset some animal rights advocates, saying fishing sharks for sport is destructive to the animal's population and environment.
"People should be viewing these sharks as wonderful animals that are important to the ocean and admiring how beautiful they are," David McGuire, director of Shark Stewards told LA Times.
Johnston contends that his catch was in line with California's fishing laws, and that he is donating the meat to feed homeless people.
"It's just like any other fishing," Johnston said. "The state limit for mako is two per person per day. We only kept one mako for a total of 18 passengers out there three days."
He said the rest of the sharks caught were released back into the ocean. "There are not that many sharks being taken out of the water. It's not hurting the population," Johnston said. " If we pull four fish out of the water per year, that's just four."
Still, some object that it still makes a difference.
"For animals, though, that have fairly low populations that we're not really sure on their stability makes it a little difficult, in my opinion, at least, to justify or support something like that," California State University biologist Kady Lyons told KABC.
