YIKES. 14-foot, 800-pound tiger #shark caught less than mile off #FollyBeach washout. http://t.co/hXq6GM3zIT #chsnews pic.twitter.com/lnu9obLoRy
— The Post and Courier (@postandcourier) August 4, 2015
If these shark stories keep popping up, I'm going to stay out of the ocean for good. The Post and Courier first reported this story of commercial fishermen reeling in this 800-pound Tiger Shark off the coast of South Carolina last weekend.
What's even more disturbing is that these sharks appear to be the norm in this area, as Joe Morris and Mike Huff of Seasonal Seafood had pulled in a 400- to 500-pound shark earlier Saturday night, and on Monday pulled in a 700-pound shark.
"There's a bunch of them out there. We catch a couple every night," Huff said.
The big one, though, had to be gutted before it could be pulled aboard and took five people to get it on the dock, he said. "She was huge," he said.
Luckily, Bryan Frazier, a S.C. Department of Natural Resources wildlife biologist, tells us that while these sharks are in fact common in the area, they should be of little concern to swimmers.
"Large tiger sharks are known to occur in South Carolina's coastal waters, however they should be of little concern to beachgoers; humans aren't on their menu," said Bryan Frazier, a S.C. Department of Natural Resources wildlife biologist who studies sharks. "Tiger sharks are known to eat sea turtles, sea birds, sharks, rays and other fish species."
So it appears I don't have to cross off swimming in the ocean on the list of things I can do just yet.
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