PANAMA CITY BEACH — A charter fisherman got the surprise of his life this week when a great white shark attacked his boat off the Bay County coast.
Capt. Scott Fitzgerald said he wouldn’t have believed it happened if he wasn’t there to film the incident himself.
Fitzgerald, captain of MadFish Charters, was on an expedition Monday about 8 miles off the coast in the Gulf of Mexico fishing for amberjack when a 10-foot great white shark attacked the motor of his boat. No one was injured in the incident, but everyone aboard was startled when they realized they were in the clutches of an aggressive great white.
“It came up, hit it really hard and knocked the boat 2 feet to its side,” Fitzgerald said. “It had the motor in its mouth and was shaking the boat from side to side, so I ran to the front and pulled the motor out of its mouth.”
--- VIDEO: SEE THE ENCOUNTER»»
Fitzgerald said after he pried the motor out of the shark’s mouth, he and his crew — consisting of a couple of customers and his girlfriend — drifted for a moment before dropping the trolling motor back in the water.
The shark began to aggressively circle the boat when he got his phone out to catch video of the incident, he said. Then the shark came back and attacked the electric trolling motor two more times before the captain left the area.
The shark obviously was targeting the electric motor, Fitzgerald said.
“They’re a real fan of electrical current, so I figure that’s what brought it up to the boat,” Fitzgerald said. “It was obviously attacking the motor.”
To catch prey and find mates, sharks use small pores on the tips of their snouts to detect electrical fields of living animals — sometimes called the sharks’ sixth sense. “Electroreception” is used to navigate the murky depths where sight and sound are scarce.
--- VIDEO: SEE THE ENCOUNTER»»
His trolling motor was the only part of the boat to sustain any damage in the attack.
Fitzgerald is no stranger to catching bull sharks or lemon sharks in the Gulf. However, for a captain who has been diving and fishing the area off the coast of Panama City Beach for more than six years, the sighting of a great white still would be hard to believe if he didn’t have video to remember it by.
“If someone told me that happened to them, I would have called them a liar,” Fitzgerald said.
