This monster took over four hours to reel in, before being released back into the waters off Miami
As our only interaction with fish happens at our local chipper, we don’t really know what we would do if we came face-to-face with this beast.
However, a guy called Mark Quartiano, known as ‘Mark the Shark’, is an expert in dealing with big creatures from the deep. He runs shark fishing tours in Florida and he was commissioned by a Japanese TV show to catch a shark for them.
But while Mark was fishing at a depth of about 500ft to try and hook a mini-Jaws, he instead brought up what he called a ‘dinosaur’ of the deep.
Identified by some experts as a rough-tail stingray, this monster fish is rarely seen by anybody due to the depth it lives at and even if one does take the bait, they are rarely hauled to the surface. And even when they do, they tend to be a good bit smaller than this fella. Weighing in at 800lbs (around 360kg), it’s a serious creature.
But thanks to the specialist equipment on Mark’s boat he was able to get it onto his boat for the picture. It took four hours to land and after a few minutes for pictures, the giant ray was released back into the waters unharmed.
“I’ve caught one like it before, but never that size, not in the last 30 years that I’ve been doing this,” Quartiano told ABC News. “It’s a very rare fish. It’s like a big gigantic whipping stingray. It’s a dinosaur.”
Hat-tip to Bleacher Report for the pic.
LISTEN: You Must Be Jokin’ with Aideen McQueen – Faith healers, Coolock craic and Gigging as Gaeilge
