PANAMA CITY BEACH — Gabriel Smeby felt like he was touching history.
Awe enveloped the group as Smeby and two Dark Side Sharkers partners, Derrick Keeny and Kyle Register, pulled in the 9-foot, 8½-inch great white shark while fishing from the beach, but now they were treating it like any other catch.
They pulled the shark in manually, a rare occurrence with a great white shark.
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Once they dragged it to shallow waters, they had a 10-minute photo session and tagged the shark before releasing it. Multiple shots show Smeby with his hands clutched on the shark’s snout, revealing multiple, menacing rows of teeth.
“It’s pretty amazing to have your hand on 365 million years of evolution,” Smeby said.
One biologist said it was the first known catch of a great white shark off PCB in his memory. George Burgess, director of a shark research program at the University of Florida, said there has never been a documented white shark attack anywhere in Florida, much less local waters.
Dark Side Sharkers, a Panama City Beach-based catch and release shark fishing club, caught the great white early Sunday morning off Panama City Beach. They declined to give a more specific location, fearing shark fishers would come in droves searching for a trophy.
The sharkers knew they had a big fish on their line — pulling with “the force of a pickup truck” — but they did not know it was a great white until it spun in the water.
Smeby said the shark he caught Sunday could be thousands of miles away by the end of the week.
NOAA Fisheries Research Biologist John Carlson, who agreed the shark was a great white based on photos he saw, said it was the first great white caught off of Panama City Beach that he can remember. However, great whites are not rare in the Gulf or in the area, with sightings dating as far back as the 1970s. Carlson said great whites have very similar habits to mako sharks, which are more common.
He added that there was a sighting at the end of January off Panama City Beach where a great white was circling a charter boat.
“White sharks are curious,” Carlson said. “They’ll investigate a trolling motor, mouth the motor and mouth the boat.”
Of course this action causes boaters to run scenes of “Jaws” in their heads and hope for bigger boats.
“White sharks only jump into boats in the movies,” he said.
Carlson said no one should be afraid of entering the water.
“You have a better chance of getting struck by lightning than being attacked by a shark,” Carlson said.
Burgess said great white sharks are commonly found in cooler waters. When they do come to Florida, it’s primarily off the shores of northeast Florida. Larger animals will turn the corner and head into the Gulf of Mexico, Burgess said.
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“That happens probably more often than we know,” he said. “We don’t always see them because we can’t catch them when they get big. They’re pretty strong animals.”
The Panama City Beach catch was a small shark by great white shark standards, he said. He was glad to hear that the fishermen caught and released that shark.
“Good,” he said. “Good for them.”