Thresher shark

Hey lads, did anyone read the article in todays herald am about the thesher the netted in cornwall it weighed 1,250lbs or something! Anyway it was sold for feck all at £250. Just think its a disgrace to kill such a fish and to add insult to injury sell it so cheaply

ya read it alright, in the mirror i think....theres a pic there aswel scary looking fish..a disgrsce they killed it no matter how much money they got... :(

[url]http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article2921960.ece[/url]

[img]http://www.timesonline.co.uk/multimedia/archive/00242/shark_385x185_242324a.jpg[/img]

An enormous thresher shark nearly twice as heavy as the previous largest known specimen has been caught off the coast of Cornwall.

Roger Nowell, a trawler fisherman, caught the 16ft (5m) shark which, at 1,250lb (568kg), is much larger than the previous record-holder, a 723lb (329kb) specimen caught by rod off Hawaii in 2005.

"Seeing that come out of the water was a bit of a shock," said Mr Nowell, who had been trawling for squid and John Dory off Land's End.

"It was alive and a bit difficult to handle for a few minutes. It was a different haul from what I am used to, that is for sure.

.I have sharks in a trawl before, but the method of fishing we use is not designed to catch sharks at all."

Mr Nowell landed his catch at Newlyn harbour in west Cornwall yesterday, and word soon got around of the giant fish.

Scores of people packed into the fish market in Penzance at 6.30am today to get a glimpse of the shark when it was sold.

Elizabeth Stevenson, whose firm W Stevenson and Sons runs the market, said the rumour was that it might now be stuffed and put on display.

She said: .There was an awful lot of interest from people watching and wanting to see the shark. There was not too much interest in buying it - it is difficult to physically move and sell that amount of fish.

.We.ve heard that there is a possibility it may not be eaten but stuffed instead..

The shark was bought by Julian Smart of Smart.s Prime Fish, who said . Damien Hirst, take note . that he was expecting to sell the shark whole rather than butcher it and sell it piecemeal.

According to reports, it is the second giant thresher shark to be caught in Cornish waters in a month. At the end of October Alan Fairless, 39, was tending his shellfish pots when he found a shark trapped in his ropes.

Unable to haul the 400kg fish aboard he and his crew called for a trawler to help, and their catch was unloaded at Gribben Head, near Mevagissey, by a forklift truck. It was sold for £340.

Threshers feed off mackerel and herring, and range the world.s warm and temperate oceans, including the east and west Atlantic.

I read this but in fairness the fishermen were taking in lobster pots, in which the shark got tangled so it wasn't a case of setting out to catch the shark, i think it was already dead.(funny enough in another paper they were netting squid :? )
It also happened in July when 2 salmon netters got one caught in their nets....bloody shame though.
As Daves post proves depending on what paper you read the shark was caught by a traweller/squid netter/lobster fisherman/salmon netter...depending what paper you read :lol:
i'll go with the Times on this one :oops: :lol:

it would be worse if there became a demand for large shark and the prices went up, if they were being offered a few grand for the shark the next time one gets caught it may not be by-catch. So the less thay get paid the less demand there is to catch these fish, plus it probably costs them more to repair the nets/pots than they'd get from catching one, so really is it in their interest to avoid these fish.. :?: