July 5, 2018 — After about 7 hours of fishing for tuna 40 miles off the coast of New Jersey on Sunday, fisherman Chris O’Neill and three other crew members decided to come closer to shore and search for mako sharks, a popular game fish in the area.
The group — which included Chris’ uncle Joe, Sam Messler and Robert McLaughlin — put out three fishing lines at 20, 40 and 65 feet deep. After about 45 minutes, O’Neill noticed the 40-foot reel start to turn. The crew waited quietly for about two minutes before the reel started to scream.
“We started reeling it in. At first, we didn’t know what we had, though we were hoping it was mako,” O’Neill, of Little Egg Harbor, told Fox News.
Within 15 minutes, a fin surfaced and the fishermen pulled the creature to the side of the boat. As O’Neill turned the 4- to 6-foot fish over, he saw its jaw and knew “right away” it wasn’t a mako: it was a great white.
“As soon as its head flashed out of water we knew what it was,” O’Neill said. “We’re fishermen. We do this a lot. You get to know the species.”
The great white shark’s triangular-shaped teeth, large gills and broad jawline are dead giveaways, O’Neill described.