Pensioner’s shark tale takes bite out of records
When 70-year-old Joe Waldis went fishing off the Loop Head, he never expected to have an experience every bit as thrilling as Hemingway’s Old Man And The Sea yarn.
It was “the fight of my life” in landing the sixgill shark weighing almost half a ton, Joe said.
“I still can’t believe it. When I go to sleep at night, I still can’t believe it. It was the fight of my life,” he said.
More accustomed to fishing for pollock and other white fish, Mr Waldis described the 12ft 9in shark as “a monster when I first saw it”.
But not everyone has been slapping Mr Waldis on the back.
The bluntnose sixgill shark, which is probably the largest predatory shark regularly encountered in our deepest waters, is internationally regarded as “near threatened”.
Killing sixgill sharks, in both commercial and recreational activities, is prohibited in many countries, but not here. Kevin Flannery, director of the Ocean World aquarium in Dingle, Co Kerry, says: “Killing fish like this, and in some cases stuffing them and hanging them up on the wall, might have been popular in the days of Darwin, but it shouldn’t be the case now.”
Mr Waldis caught the shark on mackerel bait 60 metres beneath the surface. Owner of the Clare Dragoon charter boat Luke Aston of the Carrigaholt Sea Angling Centre said: “It’s unbelievable. We knew Joe had hooked onto something big and we strapped him in and the fight was on.”
The shark was too big to haul into the boat and it was towed by the Clare Dragoon into the Shannon estuary village of Carrigaholt.
Mr Aston said: “It came in at 480kg or 1,056lb – the biggest ever fish caught by a rod and line in Ireland or Britain. Joe is a very fit 70-year-old.
“The previous record was for a Blue Fin tuna that weighed 999lb.”
Dr Simon Berrow of the Irish Whale and Dolphin Group (IWDG),v vv who saw the female shark, said yesterday: “To be able to land a shark that size with a rod and line is amazing. It goes to show how little we know of what is out there.”