Catching a 2,080 pound Great White Shark Off Cape Lookout in September of 1984

Editor’s note: In honor of the 40th anniversary sel Alligator out of Beaufort, NC is conducted by of the capture of what is still the most famous Lloyd Davidson and Travis Credle. Fishing trips great white shark taken along the coast of lasting from three to five days, twenty hours a North Carolina, we are reprinting an article day, are discomfited by unpredictable currents written by one of the participants, Jon Dodrill. and quickly changing sea conditions at the conti- This story was penned in October of 1984, nental shelf break on the edge of the Gulf while the incident was still fresh in the partici- Stream. pants’ memory. In addition to the firsthand ac- Like other area fishermen on September count of the capture of the great white shark, 25, we were fishing continuously, making up for this article gives a good description of the short the preceding twenty days of September fishing -lived commercial sharkfishing operations con- lost to Hurricane Diana. By day, we zigzagged ducted by Lloyd Davidson and Travis Credle over scores of ocean miles in search of deep wa- with their fishing vessel, the Alligator. ter snowy grouper whose presence at ninety fathoms was no more apparent than a pencil Catching the Great White Shark mark on a fish finder. Toward sunset, we began to set mile-long, 120-hook cable shark longline.

When darkness filled the boat’s cabin Lloyd The deck was awash with coagulated stared, bleary eyed, at the radar and loran blood. Up forward Capt. Lloyd Davidson fired screens, glowing compass, and the multi-colors two shots in rapid succession signaling a re- on the fish finder screen. Crewmen Sylvester newed onslaught. Seven hours of continuous Karasinski washed down a greasy piece of cold cutting and slashing of boated sharks had left chicken with a gulp of Gatorade. There had my wrists stiff. Still, the sharks were hauled been no time for lunch, and a hot meal was four over the stern at regular intervals. I was now on days away. my knees. The knife slipped from my cramped Into the night, we anchored and rean- hand at the sound of the signal shots. chored seeking to pinpoint concentrations of Details of this moment seem more de- foot-long vermillion snappers. Beeliners they’re scriptive of naval engagements among wooden called. These frustratingly finicky fish often re- ships and iron men. Instead, it was a good day fuse to bite until some late night hour when a in a pioneering commercial shark fishery with fisherman is so exhausted he can hardly feel which I had become involved a couple of their bait-stealing nibbles stripping the hooks months before. Diesel power and fiberglass fifty fathoms below. When they decide to bite now replace the canvas and oak of bloody bat- and are hooked, an amberjack, shark or barra- tles at sea, but the iron men and the same in cuda will often insure that our hydraulic reels this newest of North Carolina’s offshore com- haul in a damaged, unmarketable product. mercial fisheries. Shearwater Marine’s year old I thought of a remark made by my eight- shark fishing operation aboard the 41-foot ves- year-old son, Jon, after a beeliner trip that barely

met expenses. “Dad,” he said, “The reason you don’t do well catching beeliners is that you just don’t have the patience for little fish.” Patience. I had felt discouraged. We shut down Alligator’s engine at 2:00 a.m. The engine would not restart. I awoke swiftly at 6:00 a.m. on Septem- ber 26, our third day out. Sylvester seemed chipper, although the fish spine punctures and knicks in his hands appeared infected from constant immersion in sea water and bait squid. Flagging morale caused by the discov- ery of a water-soggy pecan cake we had saved for breakfast was lifted when the diesel finally cranked. Jon Dodrill, Jr., examines the great white By 7:00 a.m. we began hauling the first shark captured by the crew of the 41’ shark- of two one-mile shark bottom longlines set the fishing boat Alligator, which included his night before. By mid-afternoon, we were half father, Jon Dodrill. Photo courtesy Jon Dodrill. way through the second line. Sandbar and ti- ger sharks littered the deck, waiting for proc- essing. Each shark had to be either manhan- along the 3/16-inch galvanized cable. Every dled or winched over a roller in the stern. The thirty feet, Sylvester unclipped a six-foot steel shark is bled, the fins are removed for ship- leader attached to a triple strength giant tuna ment to the Orient, the head is removed, the hook. The head of an adult sandbar shark fish is gutted and cut into pieces, then washed which, we estimated, would have measured down and iced as quickly as possible. This seven feet came in on one of the hooks, the mild, boneless meat is the fragile commodity body missing at the pectorals. The single bite of an underutilized fishery. Shark is valued in mark measured fifteen inches across. Europe, Asia, and Latin America, but the tasty Around 3:30 p.m., Lloyd called aft to white meat has not yet received a broad ac- me. His voice had an undertone of excited ur- ceptance in the United States. Markets are so gency. limited that, to date, the return on Shearwater “Jon, you better come take a look at Marine’s investment in the shark fishery is this.” small. I started forward along Alligator’s star- We hauled aboard several male tiger board side. Protruding from the water and sharks over ten feet long, some of which had wrapped in the cable mainline was a symmetri- been caught by feeding on smaller sharks al- cal caudal fin nearly four feet across. For a mo- ready hooked. With extreme difficulty we ment, I thought we had entangled a small boated an 800-pound tiger, its gut packed with whale. Then I looked further into the clear, az- pieces of sandbar shark, bird feathers, a Ziploc ure water and saw a monstrous white belly bag, an amberjack head. Nearly a fourth of its and a gill-slit head. The angle and girth hid the impressive length still hung over the transom. snout from view. “My God,” was all I could Wearily, I sat down on the back of another ti- say. The crescent shaped tail and caudal keels, ger shark and began resharpening my knife. typical of mackerel sharks, clearly identified In the resulting pause, Lloyd com- this as a great white shark. mented, “I think that tiger is about as big a It was weak, but still alive. I estimated shark as we’ll see on this gear.” His eyes ex- the snout to be about fifteen feet below the amined the A-frame. surface of the water. The hydraulic rig was un- Lloyd continued to move the boat

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The mount of the great white shark captured by the crew of the Alligator in Septem- ber of 1984 continues to be a popular part of the NC Maritime Museum at Beau- fort’s collection. It is now the centerpiece of a recently opened recreational fishing exhibit. Photo by John Hairr. able to raise it any farther. Sylvester sank a exhausted itself over a period of several hours gaff into the shark and attempted to lift it. and was suffocating due to its inability to The huge fish moved slightly, scraping bottom move. paint from the hull of the boat. Another un- The shark’s immense size made it dulation and the gaff catapulted from Syl- nearly unmanageable. We had to decide im- vester’s hands and sank into the depths. mediately whether to cut it loose or try to Quickly, we put two half-inch lines around the bring it in at some considerable risk. The scien- base of the tail and cleated them off. tific value alone merited the risk and effort to We tried to determine exactly how the get it to shore. The chance to examine a great white was secured to the shark line. It be- white is presented to very few. We had to try came apparent that it had tried to swallow a it. six-foot tiger shark already hooked and, in do- Still fifty miles south of Beaufort Inlet in ing so, had become gut-hooked. The shark had 170 feet of water, we heard the weather ser- dragged this leader down the cable and had vice warning of an approaching frontal system. bitten another hook. Before either leader Lloyd worked at untangling the tail, but the could be bitten through or the hooks straight- cable tension was too great. The only solution ened, the sharks’ struggles had created slack was to cut away the cable, then resplice it. in the mainline cable. The base of its tail be- Cleat by cleat, alternating the lines, we trans- came wrapped in the mainline with the ferred the great white to the stern of the boat, shark’s twisting. Two or three wraps tightened secured it by the tail, and continued pulling in in a kinked half-hitch, and the shark was pull- the longline cable. Minutes later another ing against a mile of cable, two anchors, and twelve-foot tiger, also tailwrapped, surfaced. seventeen other sharks still struggling on the It was fresh and thrashed violently out of con- line. Trapped in this manner, the great white trol. Lloyd fired three times with No. 8 twelve-

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gauge dove shot. The shark ripped the hook strain with only the back third of the body out and escaped as the tail wrap loosened. A aboard. Towing became a necessity. We cut fresh great white could easily have done the part of the anchor line, secured the tail with same. additional lines to the A-frame and began the The remaining sharks were hauled slow, laborious six hour tow to Morehead City. aboard and processed. The angle of the late In the final two hours, the storm front hit and afternoon sun rays sliced the water without seas mounted. the resistance of a normally swift current. Be- Periodically one of us would go totter- fore starting the engine, Lloyd said, “Wait just ing aft in the rain, spray and darkness to check a minute. There’s something I want to do on the great shark. We were especially appre- first.” hensive about losing it when the incision made He went into the cabin for his facemask at the base of the tail, an effort to bleed the and fins. “I’ve got mine here, too,” I said and shark, was widening and lightening as the huge scrambled for the face mask I had brought. body was buffeted in rough seas. We stripped down, swished saliva from After relaying a radio message to Capt. the face masks and went over the side. While Ottis’ that we were bringing in a great white, Sylvester stood watch topside, Lloyd dove we turned off the VHF. At 1:00 a.m., the lights close to the contours of the massive body. I of Atlantic Beach came into view. An hour and kicked hard in a vertical dive paralleling the a half later, a small crowd of family and friends shark about seven feet away. The visibility ex- and inebriated passersby gathered to watch as tended 150 feet. I kept a close watch on sur- Russ Russell hoisted the shark to the dock with rounding water while pushing my weightless- a crane. ness toward the snout. At the Morehead City Port Terminal the At the moment I saw the head profile, next morning, the largest shark ever landed off the lower jaw was agape and twitching. Un- the Carolinas weighed in at 2,080 pounds. On moving black eyes were without expression the way back to Capt. Ottis’ with the shark, we and seemed to disregard Lloyd and me, eerily made a scheduled stop at the local elementary looking beyond us. Still quite alive, its strength school. Five hundred excited children was replaced with disinterest—a disinterest swarmed out to see the only great white most which emphasized the shark’s formidability. of them would ever see. My son, Jon, was one The distorted enlargement of underwater vi- of those children. He was the one with the sion heightened the effect and kept our atten- beaming smile. tion drawn to the rows of serrated teeth, al- ways exposed in great whites, and in motion as Copyright 1984 Jon Dodrill. this one swayed in efforts to breathe. Used with permission of the author. We spent another hour unsuccessfully trying to get the shark aboard. The winch be- gan slipping and the lines came under severe

MARITIME HISTORY NOTES Leaflet Number 3, September 2014 NORTH CAROLINA MARITIME MUSEUM, 315 Front Street, Beaufort, NC 28516 John Hairr, Editor

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