Sofia Rose, the 27-foot boat, out on a commercial spear-fishing trip, motored over to pull in the prize, a huge shark. The fisherman described when the he hauled in the speared 80-pound amberjack, he saw a bloody, barrel-sized chunk torn from its gut. Paul Varian, a charter and commercial fishing captain who runs the Sofia Rose out of the Boca Raton Inlet, said it was a great white! South Florida’s coastal waters have been thick with sharks over the last two months as masses of mostly black tip and spinner sharks meander north on an annual seasonal migration expected to clear out in coming weeks.
Neil Hammerschlag, an assistant professor the University of Miami who has studied great whites for a decade. He said that the great white, capable of swimming great distances, spends most of its time in deeper, cooler ocean waters. But the species will move closer to the coast to target amberjack and other large prey at wrecks and undersea mounds such as the famed Islamorada hump.
Great whites, which Burgess said may be following and feeding on endangered right whales and their calves during winter migrations into Florida, do make occasional appearances at the end of fishing lines. The crew of the Sofia Rose — Varian, Finn and Kevin Follin — know what they saw during the trip last week. They’d never seen anything like it before.
