A group of Florida fishermen had the surprise of a lifetime when their catch was stolen by an unlikely competitor: a great white shark.
Video capturing the charter boat's stunning encounter off Jacksonville’s coast Saturday shows an estimated 12-foot-long shark circling after taking a bite out of a red snapper.
Meanwhile, what was once an estimated 25-pound fish is seen bobbing around with a crescent-shaped chunk missing from it.
"You want to go swimming?" one man jokes after watching the shark circle around and take another chomp out of the half-eaten fish as it remains hooked to a man's pole.
“Incredible day. It stands true; you never know what you will see when you're on the sea!” Jacksonville Fishing Charters, which hosted the trip, posted on Facebook with a video of their rattling encounter.
According to The MarineBio Conservation Society, the carnivores have one of the widest geographic ranges of any marine animal, as they're found in cold waters as well as tropical.
But they aren't very common anywhere within that range. Hoping to understand their movements better, scientists have attached GPS trackers to several sharks.
Some of the most famous tagged great whites are named Katharine and Mary Lee. Mary Lee, who was tagged in September 2012, has zigzagged up and down the East Coast, between Georgia and Massachusetts. She's generally stayed clear of Florida's coast. Katharine, who was tagged in August 2013, has adventurously gone back and forth from the Gulf of Mexico, through the Florida Keys, and up toward Newfoundland, where she was most recently seen.
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