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Diane Guillemette, left, from Sainte-Rose-du Nord, Que., caught this 500-pound Greenland shark
SAINTE-ROSE DU NORD, Quebec -- A shark the size of a car has been reeled in by a woman out for a day of ice fishing.
The whopper — a Greenland shark, which isn’t dangerous — is so big it had to be pulled from the water with the help of a snowmobile.
Diane Guillemette knew she had a big fish on her line but she wasn’t expecting a shark.
‘‘We worked for an hour and a half to get it up to the hole in the ice,’’ said Guillemette.
She was fishing on the weekend with her partner in the Saguenay fiord, where waters from the Gulf of St. Lawrence and the Atlantic Ocean meet about 250 kilometres north of Quebec City.
‘‘It was about 680 feet down, completely at the bottom,’’ she said of the shark. ‘‘So it took 366 turns on a wheel crank to bring it to the surface.’’
The Greenland shark weighed 230 kilograms and was more than three metres long.
‘‘I reeled in the line gently because the catch was very heavy.’’
At one point, Guillemette thought she had lost her catch but she got help enlarging the ice hole. The giant shark was then landed with the aid of a snowmobile.
The Greenland shark is known as the sleeper shark and lives in polar waters all year round. It isn’t considered dangerous to humans.
Sharks are known to make their way into the Saguenay fiord from time to time.
Jean-Denis Lambert, a marine biologist with the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, said three have been caught in the last 11 years.
‘‘It’s not something we see often,’’ he said.
‘‘It’s not too dangerous because actually there’s not too many of them, first of all, and it’s a species that lives in deep water, cold water, open water.
‘‘It’s not a coastal species and in this case it goes up into the fiord of Saguenay because the fiord of Saguenay is very deep and the waters in the basins are very cold.’’
The shark is in Guillemette’s back yard on the snow, awaiting pick up by a local museum that’s still looking for a freezer big enough to store it.
Reader Comments
7 people have commented so far.did you kill the shark, just to have your photo taken or did you put it back alive or eat it. if so surley if there isnt that many of them it would be kinder to put back once you got your pic???????
- stephanie hodges · England · Jul 13, 2008 @ 4:18pm
Well this is for you stephanie sometimes when catching a Greenland shark if there is any damage it is better to sacrafice the shark than let it suffer a long painful death in the ocean so really theyre doing it a favor by killing it and then they can take tissue samples and find out more things about this wonderful mysterious creature of the deap. (No affence)
- Tyler Stephenson · USA · Feb 17, 2009 @ 12:57pm
well i think that its stupid to catch them in the first place because when the hook gets n thier mouth ts going to hurt it anyway. That is a very stupid reason to kill an animal. "Oh no! I caught a shark by hurtng it, oh well im going to kill it!" soo stupid
- JAKK Maidan · ridgefield CT · Jan 31, 2010 @ 12:04pm
Jakk, unfortunately you can't easily eat a Greenland shark, their tissues are full of ammonia which acts as natural antifreeze but makes them pretty inedible. For this very reason they were likely not trying to catch Greenland sharks, but other, tastier, species, so it's not really fair to say it's stupid to catch the shark. As to whether or not they could have removed the hook and put it back in the water, I have no idea....
- Mac the Knife · Warshington, DC · Feb 2, 2010 @ 8:49am
Though the Greenland Shark is not a frequent maneater it is a generic scavenger and opportunistic predator and a sufficiently large specimen would have no trouble ingesting a human swimmer, diver, or accident victim. Large animal remains--caribou, horse, dog, et al--have been recovered from the stomachs of dissected specimens and it stands to reason that, given the opening, a 5 meter or longer Greenland Shark would love to lunch on you. When it comes to you eating them, however, consumption of the un--aged flesh of these ammoniac monsters by humans or sled dogs is definitely a bad idea as it induces a peculiar (and unpleasant) form of intoxication.
- Wild Bill Cox · Pittsburgh, Pa. · Apr 7, 2010 @ 12:30am
Really people? It's a damn shark. awwww the hook hurt the poor sharks mouth!! grow up...
- Matt · Rochester, Minnesota · Apr 14, 2010 @ 8:14pm
Matt - damn straight. We need research on these sharks, and putting them back won't help will it? honestly, you people. There is no other way, unless you wanna dive in freezing deep water with a shark, be my guest. I love fish, wanna work with sharks at CSU Monterrey, but tbh, what else can you do?
- veebs · a place · Apr 30, 2010 @ 12:59pm