ooops
Posted on 12/15/2002 6:57:10 PM PST by HairOfTheDog
Fisherman reports encounter with 20-foot great white off Point Defiance
Bob Mottram; The News Tribune
A retired aquarium worker and well-known Tacoma angler, Bob Salatino, encountered what he says was an 18- to 20-foot great white shark in Puget Sound off Tacoma's Point Defiance.
Salatino worked for 20 years at the Point Defiance Zoo and Aquarium. John Rupp, the aquatic animal curator there, described him as "a knowledgeable fisherman."
Salatino said Friday he encountered the shark while fishing alone for salmon Dec. 6. He was several hundred yards north of Point Defiance.
"The sun was shining, no wind, the water was clear. I was letting my gear out," he said.
Salatino fished with a wire "meat line," a flasher and a bait of herring. A flasher is a metal or plastic device attached to the line ahead of the bait to attract salmon.
"I was standing up in my boat to see how the herring was working behind the flasher," he said. "The flasher was skipping along the top of the water. I went to let it down, and the shark grabbed it."
Salatino had attached a 5-pound lead weight to the line, to take the bait to deep water.
"That 5 pounds of lead just stopped dead," he said. "When he grabbed it, the line went slack. I started cranking in, and my pole bent right around."
Then the shark "just came charging right out of the water," about 25 feet away, Salatino said. "It had the flasher in its mouth, and was throwing its head back and forth. His teeth were like a foot in front of his jaws."
The shark rolled completely over, Salatino said, and the flasher snapped out of its mouth.
"It had a lot of tension, and came flying straight at me," he said, "coming like a bullet. I ducked, and it went clear on the other side of the boat."
The shark splashed around a bit on the surface, dived, and came back to the surface two more times.
"He was looking me square in the eye," Salatino said. "His eyeball was rolled way back."
The shark was 2 to 4 feet longer than his 16-foot boat, the angler said. It was gray on top, its belly was white, and it had "a huge stomach."
Tawnya Patrick, manager of the marine biology program at the University of Washington, said she had not heard of any other encounters with great whites in Puget Sound but that such a thing "is possible." Great whites inhabit the ocean from California to Vancouver Island, she said.
Rupp, the aquatic animal curator, said an encounter such as Salatino described was "improbable but not impossible.
"I suspect that great white sharks do make occasional sorties into Puget Sound," he said. "It would not be a normal occurrence, but it's certainly within the realm of possibility."
Great white sharks patrol offshore on the Washington coast "pretty much all the time," Rupp said. There are no recorded landings or encounters in Puget Sound.
What might prompt a great white to enter Puget Sound?
"It would be pure speculation," Rupp said. "You can go all the way from food drive to just curiosity."
Salatino knows the incident sounds impossible.
"I didn't want to say anything," he said. "Who'd believe you?"
The only potential witnesses were several yards away in another boat. "Two guys should have witnessed it, but they had their heads down," Salatino said.
Bob Mottram: 253-597-8640
bob.mottram@mail.tribnet.com
Sharks at a glance
The great white shark, also called the white shark, white death and man-eater, occurs worldwide in temperate seas. It feeds on fish, gulls, seals and sea lions.
The International Game Fish Association says the great white probably is the most dangerous shark, considering its size, strength and inclination to attack. It has attacked small boats, sometimes sinking them, the association says, and has been known to take a "larger" boat by the propeller and shake it.
An angler fishing off southern Australia in 1959 captured a great white shark that weighed 2,664 pounds.
Bob Mottram
ooops
This guy is probably a pretty authoritative source.
"The maximum reported length of the bull shark is 11.5 feet (350 cm), weighing over 500 pounds (230 kg). Size at birth is around 29 inches (75 cm). Females grow larger than males, averaging 7.8 feet (240 cm) as adults, weighing around 285 pounds (130 kg). This is the result of a longer lifespan of about 16 years, compared to 12 years for males. Males average 7.3 feet (225 cm) and weigh 209 pounds (95 kg). Growth rates calculated from captive bull sharks were estimated to be about 11 inches (28 cm) per year in the first years of life, slowing to half that rate after about 4 years of age...from the Florida Museum of Natural History.
I find them to actually be fairly elegant animals, though evil looking.
"The largest striped bass ever recorded was a 125 pound female from North Carolina, 1891." Didn't have any idea they ever got that big, 'til now. found that on a People's Republic of Maryland website.
Amazing what you can learn on FR.
Sounds like it... I am glad it happened to him!
...Poets talk about "spots of time," but it is really fishermen who experience eternity compressed into a moment. No one can tell what a spot of time is until suddenly the whole world is a fish and the fish is gone. I shall remember that son of a bitch forever...... Now nearly all those I loved and did not understand when I was young are dead, but I still reach out to them.
Of course, now I am too old to be much of a fisherman, and now of course I usually fish the big waters alone, although some friends think I shouldn't. Like many fly fishermen in western Montana where the summer days are almost Arctic in length, I often do not start fishing until the cool of the evening. Then in the Arctic half-light of the canyon, all existence fades to a being with my soul and memories and the sounds of the Big Blackfoot River and a four-count rhythm and the hope that a fish will rise.
~A River Runs through it...Norman Maclean
Eternity compressed into a moment. The spot of time that escapes you.
Tell me if you get one...a guy was showing us a cool harpoon the other day, I kind of wanted to get one ;-)
I like to fish, too.
They regularly pull in Bull sharks when fishing from Barnegat Inlet New Jersey. Tiger sharks and hammerheads have been pulled in in Eastern Long Island Sound.
Stay well - Stay safe - Stay armed - Yorktown
A family friend remembers a story better than I do, of he, my dad and I fishing at Sekiu in a rented kicker boat, when I was a little kid.
My dad is very much into the art of playing a salmon, the timing of perfectly setting the hook and then playing the fish until the fish is done. It can take an hour to land a big fish my dad's way, and it was wonderful sport.
A fish hit my line as we sat there drifting... the tell-tale "zzzzzzzzzzz" of a salmon running hard. My dad reached for my pole to do it for me. Our friend says he grabbed my dad's arm and said "Don't you dare! That is her fish!" Heh.
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