Fisher left stunned as great white shark mauls her first huge tuna catch at Cape Jaffa
A woman fishing off the coast of SA’s southeast has been left shocked as a great white shark took a huge chunk out of her first ever tuna catch. Watch the video.
SA News
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A woman fishing with a group on South Australia’s southeast coast has shared the unbelievable moment a hungry great white shark mauled her tuna catch just as it was being pulled onto their boat.
Melbourne resident Isabella Sesto, 29, posted a video to social media on Wednesday showing the moment she landed her prized fish after a 1.5 hour battle to reel it in – with the shark still chomping at it.
Mrs Sesto, an experienced sailor who fishes five times a week as a sponsored angler, was with her husband and friends about 30km from Cape Jaffa last Friday when she saw the shark approaching the boat.
“It’s a white, it’s a big white, it’s a big white,” Mrs Sesto is heard screaming in the video.
Moments later the shark attempted to bite the boat’s motor, as one of the group exclaims: “Oh, he’s eating your motors”.
The group then pulled the fish onto the boat with the shark still attacking it, resulting in huge tears across its tail end.
Mrs Sesto said she comes to SA at least five times a year to fish and this was her “closest interaction” with a great white shark, having only seen them once before.
“It was only about 10m from the boat and this big shadow came over the fish,” Mrs Sesto told The Advertiser.
“Then we went, ‘Oh my God, it’s a shark’.
“I didn’t have any energy left but I went as hard as I could, I was just so excited.”
Mrs Sesto said because the shark bite had bled the fish for them, the meat from the tuna was “immaculate”.
“The top half we cut up and actually had fresh sashimi, and the bottom half we made into tuna steaks,” she said.
On Monday, Pam Cook was attacked by a great white while swimming at Beachport in SA’s southeast, sustaining “a bite on her right ankle and her right thigh” which resulted in five-and-a-half hours of surgery at Mount Gambier hospital and more than 200 stitches.
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