The durability of a mako.
Michael Pratt and Jeffrey Blackman, well known tuna fishermen out of Green Harbor, Mass. were tuna fishing on Stellwagen Bank in mid August, 2007. They were using rod and reel, and a live bluefish for tuna bait. They took a mako that after being gutted, weighed-in over 800 lbs. This catch in itself is interesting because of the large size of the mako, but what happened after the catch is interesting too.
They gutted the mako in the water, and left it alongside the boat.
Removing any mako’s insides and liver is fatal to the mako, but unlike other earthly creatures, not immediately fatal. Makos die on their terms, not ours.
After lying alongside the boat for 45 minutes, the mako was brought onboard. Fifteen minutes later, this gutted and presumed dead mako went berserk in the cockpit. It clamped down on the gunnel with its teeth, and started ripping it up; breaking its teeth in the process. The mako got its body to snap bounce up 6 feet in the air and slam down on the deck sending shudders through the boat. Because the mako was so large, it spanned the cockpit, gunnel to gunnel, and on the other side of the boat, with a violent tail swipe, the mako knocked a fairly new Shimano Tiagra 130 rod and reel out of the rod holder, sent it high up in the air and overboard - a $2,000 rod and reel gone in a matter of seconds. Mike hit the Man Overboard Button on the GPS, to mark the location of the lost gear.
The next day, they returned to the lost rod and reel location, with a diver, Robert Macaleese. Rob went down to the bottom in 110 feet of water, and recovered the rod and reel. He said it was within 15 feet of the marker anchor on the bottom.
A post script to that story:
I spoke to Mike’s father, Ralph Pratt, who flies his own spotter plane out of Marshfield Massachusetts.
Shortly after his son Michael’s mako/rod-reel adventure, Ralph was flying over Cape Cod Bay and spotted an extraordinarily large mako, south of the “Fishing Ledge.” - toward the area locally referred to as the “Parking Lot.” Ralph called his son to check it out. Mike came over in his boat, got behind and close to the cruising mako, followed it, and estimated its size. Michael said it was larger than the mako that he had caught a few days earlier – a lot larger! He estimated it to be about 1,500 lbs. However, they let it swim off and continued looking for tuna.
Ralph Pratt has been a spotter plane pilot for 20 years. He told me that in the last couple of years he has seen more big makos in Cape Cod Bay, Mass. Bay, at Stellwagen Bank and at Wildcat Knoll areas than he had previously seen.
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Originally Posted by Tuna Meltdown
GOOD LUCK
