Catch of the day
9ft blue shark landed by father and son could be biggest ever caught off Britain
IT is probably one of the biggest blue sharks ever landed in British waters.
But the men who heaved it on to the deck of their boat may never know for sure whether the 9ft predator was a record-breaker.
Instead, father and son Mike and harry Pardoe had to be content with measuring the shark and estimating its weight before returning it to the water
harry, 30, spent 90 minutes fighting to bring the fish to the surface before heaving it on to the deck of their charter boat off Falmouth, Cornwall.
By measuring the shark’s length and girth, they were able to calculate its weight at 251lbs. That makes it one of the biggest blue sharks ever caught off the UK – and 33lbs more than the record for a blue shark caught in British waters set in 1959.
Under the rules as they were then, however, a specimen must be brought back to land and weighed – meaning it would die. Mike, 60, said it was ‘disappointing’ but neither he nor harry were ever going to kill the shark in order to try to claim a record.
The pair were out on the Anglo Dawn charter boat skippered by Andy howell from Falmouth to celebrate harry’s birthday when they made the spectacular catch 20 miles out to sea. On the same trip Mike also secured another huge blue shark, which weighed 180lbs.
The senior Mr Pardoe, from Birmingham, said: ‘We weren’t specifically fishing for sharks.
‘I didn’t even know there were sharks of that size in that area so it was amazing to get two huge ones in the same day. ‘When it first bit, harry said straight away it was a big one.’
They may still be able to claim a place in the record books yet if they apply to the The Shark Angling Club of Great Britain which introduced the British Measured and Released Records in 2017 as a conservation measure.
The biggest shark of any type caught in British waters was a 507lb porbeagle landed off Dunnet head, Caithness, in 1993.