A juvenile great white shark off Cape Cod grabbed a hooked fish straight off the line on camera, a rare underwater look at depredation that has local charter captains fretting over lost catch and gear.
National Geographic crews filming off the Massachusetts coast in June captured the moment a young female white shark took a fish right off a fishing line. The behavior is called depredation: a shark stealing a fish already on the hook.
CBS News Boston reported that explorer and photographer Brian Skerry, a Massachusetts native working with National Geographic, got the shot with help from local charter boat captains. A small camera was fixed to a bridle and the fishing lure. The shark did the rest.
Skerry described the grab in plain terms. The shark took the fish “like a loaf of bread.”
Skerry told WBZ-TV the move looked deliberate. The shark came in from the side and avoided the lure.
"She grabs it from the side, and it almost seems intentional that she's not grabbing where the lure is. She doesn't want to get hooked either, you know, or herself,"
He added a caution with the same point.
"Now again, maybe I'm giving them too much credit or reading into it too much, but I do think there's some decisions being made."
Greg Skomal, a shark expert with the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries, told National Geographic it was the first time he had seen video that shows shark depredation underwater. That is not a small claim from someone who studies these animals for a living.
Local fishing crews say they are hauling in more fish that have already been mauled. They tie it to more sharks in the area. They also say they worry about the money side: sharks eating the catch, chewing up gear, and scaring off charter clients who paid for a day on the water.
No dollar losses, damaged reels, or canceled trips are tallied in the available reporting. The worry is real enough to the people who run the boats. A hooked fish is income until a white shark treats it like free lunch.
Cape Cod has lived with great whites for years as seals drew the predators closer to shore. Depredation turns that presence into a direct hit on working lines. The video does not settle how often it happens. It does show how cleanly a juvenile can do it when the camera is rolling.
Skerry’s footage gives the public something fishermen already knew in their gut: a great white does not need a beach panic to cost somebody a day’s work. It only needs a fish on a hook and a clear angle of attack.
Nature does not send invoices. Charter captains still have to pay theirs.
