Florida man films 'crazy' act with live hammerhead shark
'I’ve never come home with a missing limb. I guess I’m sort of crazy though.'
Insane GoPro video has emerged of a Florida man swimming a massive shark out to sea after he "accidentally" snagged it on his line.
It shows 23-year-old Brandon Griffin holding a 3.6-metre hammerhead by its dorsal fin and head, guiding it 50 metres over three breaks at a beach in South Florida and out to the open ocean.
“We target big sharks off the beach — all legal. You don’t don’t know what you’re going to catch, but we hooked into a hammerhead and they are protected,” Griffin told Yahoo News Australia. “We did whatever it took to get it in really fast, get the hook out. Then I swam with it past the shore break to ensure it had a good release and swam out perfectly fine.”
International reaction to shark release GoPro video
While the capture and release of the shark took just 22 minutes on Sunday morning. A still of from the video, that shows Griffin appearing to ride the shark has continued to garner international attention.
“I’ve had a lot of Australian guys comment on the photo and say you’re f***ing nuts,” Griffin said.
“But in Florida, when you’re releasing a big hammerhead you don’t want it to die. I would exhaust myself before I gave up on it. I walk it through the waves, make sure it gets oxygen in its lungs. I've never had one wash up. It’s quite the thrill though.”
Griffin concedes his family do worry about him getting so close to the ocean’s apex predators, but he’s able to reassure them he’s never been bitten.
“I’ve never come home with a missing limb. I guess I’m sort of crazy though,” he said.
You can watch the video below.
Sharks and rays declining due to commercial fishing
Hammerheads are considered "dangerous" by authorities and rank as the seventh most likely shark to bite a human.
While they can be targeted in federal US waters, in Florida it's illegal to harvest, possess, land, purchase, sell or exchange the species. The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) includes the great hammerhead on its Red List of Threatened Species as critically endangered.
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Commercial fishing is listed as the key reason for their demise, with at-vessel mortality estimated at 30 and 56 per cent when caught on commercial longlines. A similar species, scalloped hammerheads have a mortality of around 100 per cent when they are injured and then released.
Globally, the abundance of sharks and rays has declined by over 70 per cent in just 50 years, and close to 40 per cent are now threatened with extinction.
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