Headless hammerhead, N. Miami Beach

[esgeo]

Hello all,

I am pretty new to the site but sure appreciate what I have learned being here, and figured I should try to give back and share a recent fishing experience from two weeks ago that yielded a story that is still hard to believe.  It's a bit of a narrative, but hopefully you will enjoy.  You may have to take a peek at the images as inspiration to weed through the details.  

I live in the SF Bay Area, but had to make an unplanned trip to Miami for a funeral two Sundays ago.  The economics/logistics of getting from here to there and back with only one day notice led me to buy a ticket that left me with some free time in on a Monday before flying back on Tuesday.  After the funeral, my sister (who also had to get a Tuesday return and took all these photos) and I decided that we should try to fish a little on Monday afternoon if there was something available.  Having come down from NY, she was happy to just get out on a boat in mid March and didn't care about what kind of fishing.  We ended up finding a company that ran two boats named Therapy IV out of Haulover Park Marina in N. Miami Beach that did half day morning and afternoon open party trips and got on one of the afternoon trips.  We figured worse case scenario, we would get to enjoy some quality time on what was forecast to be one of the calmer days they had seen in several weeks.  The boat was far and away the poshest fishing boat I have ever set foot on.  As an ominous aside for those of you that are superstitious, my sister and I had our luggage with us and nowhere to store it during the trip, as we had traveled by taxi to the marina from our hotel the night before and were going catch another cab to stay up with our uncle north of Ft. Lauderdale after the trip.  I had asked about this in advance when booking the trip and they said no problem.  I figured there would be a place onshore to leave the bags, but when we arrived they told us to bring them on the boat as there was plenty of space.

Anyhow, after only a minute or two the deckhands were getting lines in the water to troll out from the pass and we just ran straight offshore for the first mile or two.  We ended up hooking some really small fish on the troll, the largest being a blackfin tuna that probably only weighed a couple of lbs, and the rest being lost at or near the boat.  After an hour of that (4 hour trip total) and 4-5 strikes total, they decided to shift gears and fish for sharks.  I had never been involved in shark fishing before, so I was eager to check out the methods they employed.  We were a couple miles offshore and despite the relatively calm conditions, there was quite a current.  We were out in 350' of water, and they set up a drift with three line with fresh dead bait- basically small tuna that had most of the backbone filleted out and were threaded with two large hooks.  They set one line on the drift, one with weight and a float at 150' depth, and the third with weight on wire near the bottom.  I figured we would spend the rest of the day hoping for a bite, but didn't expect much.  Given there were six customers on the boat, I thought the odds of getting to fight a fish were pretty long.

After about 30-45 minutes of getting set up, the top line got bit.  The guy who ended up taking this fish was from Minnesota and had never done any of this type of fishing, and within the first minute of him learning the mechanics, the line went slack and the fish was gone.  They reeled in the line and the bait was still intact, but they put a fresh bait back on that line and took the old bait and just hung it from the stern right at the boat.  I went back up on the bridge and was watching and soon we picked up a 5-6' shark cruising the surface near the boat.  After a few minutes of seeing it come and go, one of the deckhands took a live bait (maybe a jack?) and threw it out .  The bait took off near the shark but didn't get bit and the captain recommended lopping the tail off the bait.  That was done, and literally less than a minute after that bait was back in the water, they were hooked up on that rig, which was relatively light setup on something like a 4/0 or 6/0.  

Over the next 10-15 minutes the guy from Minnesota worked this fish in while the other lines kept soaking.  The captain was maneuvering a bit to help the cause and I was trying to keep the drifting line and the line with the float from getting in the way of the guy fighting the fish and the deckhand assisting him.  Once the fish was to the boat, they id'ed it as a silky shark.  The customer wanted to have a replica made, so the fish was skin gaffed and brought in the boat.  The replica costs also included a fee to tag the shark, which from my understanding doesn't apply to all species but does to the silky shark- so they went about measuring and tagging it and getting a few pictures with the angler.   About the same time, one of the lines I had been trying to keep out of the way of all the near boat action got bit, so I ended up taking it and starting to fight this new fish on the setup that had the float at 150', which was a 10/0 reel with 100lb mono.  Meanwhile the soon-to-be tagged silky shark wiggled its way under my feet as I was trying to reel this second fish in (first photo).  

After about 10 minutes of working the fish I had the float about 100' from the boat.  The deckhand told me that if I was tired I could let some of the other people work the fish, as we were 3 hours into the 4 hour trip.  I told him I would try to get the rest of it done quickly, but if it went longer I would be happy to let some of the others pull, given that it was getting to be late in the day.  Only a minute or two later, I watched the all the line I had brought back in and more start to strip out of the reel at an alarming pace.  I just held the rod up as this fish ran away and thought to myself that it must be a bigger fish than I thought.  At that point, turned over the rod.

So for the next half hour, we rotated through all of us taking 5 minute shifts trying to wear this fish out.  At one point the captain saw two sharks, one larger than the other, come near the surface several hundred feet behind the boat, but they weren't sure if one of these was the shark that was hooked.  After about 25 minutes we got the float to the boat and shortly thereafter we started to see color on the fish.  At this point I was standing next to the guy reeling and looking down to see how big this fish was and I couldn't quite make sense of what I was seeing.  There were two sharks that could be seen and one of them looked to be tailhooked as its body was is a somewhat twisted position.  I also saw a shape on the tailhooked fish that looked like a hammerhead's head that was in a really awkward position.  As the color came closer to the boat, all the sudden the non-tailhooked shark, which I think was 6-7' long, pulled away from the other and dove as the hammerhead came to the surface and smacked into the hull with its body.   I don't recall the details of the deckhand getting the hammerhead into the boat, but the scene that unfolded immediately thereafter was quite difficult to comprehend.

The hammerhead had two hooks in it from the bait- one in the mouth and a second in the body just behind the left pectoral fin.  The leader material connecting the hooks was the only thing keeping the head of the hammerhead and it's body in the same area.  There was a large bite taken out of the hammerhead in front of dorsal fin that had completely severed the head from the body.  The first picture of the fish in the boat shows this clearly, as the head is sitting down near the pelvic fins (photo hh1).  Other than a few other lacerations on the top of the head, there were no other bite marks on the fish.  The hammerhead had a bunch of blue paint on it from running against the bottom of the boat just before it was hoisted in.  The body was still twitching a little.

My initial reaction was one of surprise-  given the fight, I expected that this fish would have been twice the size of the last one that was tagged and released.  I couldn't understand why this fish on heavy tackle took so much longer to get in than the silky shark that was more or less the same size.  But this was soon overcome by a feeling of mild disgust and guilt- in that while trying to fish catch and release we ended up killing this fish.  After several photos were taken, we "released" the hammerhead where is quickly sunk out of view.  Nobody on the boat had ever seen this before, but the deckhand and captain said they had heard silky sharks hunt hammerheads- but had never seen any evidence.  I was pretty struck by the position of the wound to the hammerhead- right at the brainstem, with a second set of lacerations a little further up on the head.  

With a little more time to process the situation, I started to concoct an interpretation of the events.  I think the big line stripping run that I experienced when the hammerhead was first getting close to the boat was it getting attacked and pulled by this other shark.  That would have been relatively close to the boat, where at this point we had bait soaking for 2 hours.  The other shark then likely fought us for the hammerhead for the next half hour.  There were times in the fight where reeling was less laborious and other times there were pretty significant runs- probably the difference between times the predator shark was free of or running with the hammerhead.  The second set of lacerations that could be seen in the head were probably from times the predator was re-latching on.  I imagine the final decapitation happened pretty close to the boat, but up to that point the predator had something still to latch on to.  Again the lack of wounds anywhere else was really striking.

I tend to be a pretty analytical type person, and given this was a new experience to everyone involved and thus represented something far from the norm, I reasoned through what were likely contributing factors.  First off, after a half hour or so of soaking baits, we were seeing sign of sharks.  There were 3 hooked in a two hour period, and potentially at least 2 more seen.  Most of the sharks seen had the appearance of the silky shark that was brought in the boat.  The deckhand thought that the shark eating the hammerhead was the same shark as that had been tagged, but I never saw the tag and the second shark looked much larger when we saw it 10-15' below the surface, where it broke away from the hammerhead.  Regardless, there is evidence to believe there were a lot of sharks around.  Second, the hammerhead was perhaps prone to attack from the way it was hooked.  Not sure when it got hooked behind the pectoral fin, but maybe that made it swim more erratically and caused the other shark to attack.  There is also the possibility that the body hooking came after it had been attacked.  Finally, the black suitcase I brought on board likely didn't help matters.  If I could do one thing over again as an experiment, I would have rented a car and we could have left our suitcases on dry land.  Maybe then we would have been eating dorado that evening instead of unintentionally killing a hammerhead...  Wasn't really what I imagined an afternoon of post-funeral "Therapy" fishing should involve!

Would be interested to hear if anyone else has experienced something of this nature or has some knowledge of this kind of thing- sure I've seen a lot of fish get eaten by sharks, but you are usually left with the head on the hook- rather than the head being targeted by the shark.  It reminds me of stories of orcas hunting great whites.  Anyhow, hope y'all enjoy reading about it and, if nothing else, I never want to be in the water around silky sharks!  

Eric

[bestout]

i have been doing shark fishing by the halouver inlet but have never seen this.

[Shark Hunter]

That doesn't surprise me. They are ferocious Predators that will eat whatever they can fit in their mouth. Even if its other Sharks.

[Robert Janssen]

Had this in my computer for many years. Still can't quite wrap my head around it.

[esgeo]

Had this in my computer for many years. Still can't quite wrap my head around it.

That is truly remarkable- at at a scale that makes my story seem pretty trivial!

[Dominick]

All I have to say is wow!  This wow! is for all the other photos.  Strange things happen out on the water.  Dominick

[dutchy17]

These are some of the reasons i don't go swimming in saltwater. NO EXCEPTIONS!

[Shark Hunter]

That last one I posted with the cobia head is pretty impressive. You can see the tooth marks and then just one clean bite.
Robert, That must have been Jaws that bit that Hammerhead!

[Robert Janssen]

Robert, That must have been Jaws that bit that Hammerhead!

Um, i think, if memory serves, it was said to be an enormous (obviously) Tiger Shark... The picture is quite well known; I've known about it for ten-twelve years. The story behind it and angler must be available somewhere.

Really though, the pic says it all. There just isn't much story that needs to be told.

.

[ChileRelleno]

Very interesting story, thanks for sharing.

Nothing new here as to shark on shark.
Many people even use smaller sharks as bait for larger, Atlantic Sharpnose are a prime bait for LBSF.
And as shown it is very common for sharks to predate upon another showing distress.

The last pic shown does indeed have a story that goes with it.
It is a Scalloped Hammer in the 14' range, hooked off Queensland Australia on the Ribbon Reefs.
The people fighting the shark say that a Tiger shark made a snack of it, tearing it to pieces.

Here is a news story (with pics) from Down Under, 19' Great White Bites 10' in Half.
http://www.news.com.au/national/monster-shark-bites-great-white-in-half-near-stradbroke-island/story-e6frfkvr-1225791719705

As to the smaller shark being harder to bring in, a foul hooked fish can create a lot of drag.

[Rare]

Many people even use smaller sharks as bait for larger,

Bonnet shark down south.

[johndtuttle]

Had this in my computer for many years. Still can't quite wrap my head around it.

"We need a bigger boat!"

---Jaws 1975