Finally, we have some more information on the latest great white shark to come out of Florida.
Navarre Beach, Florida, has been buzzing around the internet since a local fisherman reeled in a great white shark from the Navarre Beach Fishing Pier around 3 p.m. Tuesday.
Thomas Thielman, an employee at the pier and a member of the True Blue fishing team, told the NWF Daily News the angler who caught the shark was Jeremy Utter, a regular at the pier.
Thielman, who helped tag and release the shark, said Utter was using bonito as bait and that the fight lasted about 90 minutes.
"Well when we got the bite, we did our normal thing and let him eat, then we hooked him up and it was probably about an hour-and-30-minute fight," Theilman told the Pensacola News Journal. "When we got the leader close, I personally grabbed the leader, and once we realized what it was, that's when everybody's eyes just blew up."
Few anglers can say they've ever caught a great white shark, let alone one from the beach. They do frequently enter the Gulf of Mexico, but you'd be lucky to even spot one. In fact, this was the first great white ever caught at the Navarre Beach pier.
"It is rare, it is absolutely rare," Thielman said. "We don't get that many here. We see sightings of them, but we never caught one. That's the first one our team has caught. We put a tag on it, got all the measurements, and got a safe, clean release."
Many are questioning the validity behind the size estimation of 10 feet, 700 pounds, however.
Perhaps 10 feet does seem a tad long, but it's hard to tell with sharks, as that tail fin covertly adds some length.
Most of the early videos were seriously lacking in the quality department, so we've gathered all the videos we've seen so far.
How big is this shark really? You be the judge.
It's hard to tell the size from the video above since piers sit so high off the water, but this is probably the best up-close look you're going to get.
However, I think this next video best shows the size.
When it comes to catching sharks, the priority is safely releasing the shark as quickly as possible, which these guys absolutely did. As a result, you don't have a ton of time to measure, so you often have to do some estimating.
I think it's possible it was a little short of 10 feet, but it's close. These two videos show the mass of this fish better than many of the first videos to go viral.
"It was amazing," Utter told ABC News. "Fish of a lifetime."
Congrats to Utter and the True Blue fishing team on such a rare catch!
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