by Tammy L Mahan

Created on: January 12, 2009

There is a lot of speculation about the largest great white shark ever caught. Most reports that are available list three sharks ranging in size from 21.3 feet, 23.3 feet to an astounding 37.6 feet. Each of the three sharks where caught in different locations with thousand of miles of ocean spanning between them.

All three of them have been listed in the Guinness Book of World records. And at that time each shark was believed to be the largest unfortunately over the course of time and the development of special forensic tools their sizes continued to grow smaller.

Each of these three sharks and their captures offer an extraordinary story of man (men) verse beast on the open ocean waters. Which the thought alone can invoke tales of horror considering the great white shark is the almighty of the sea. With the average size of an adult great white shark measuring 13 to 16 feet in length.

The Port Fairy Shark

This great white shark was the first known great white to be captured and thought to be the largest for several years. It was captured in the mid 1870's in Australia. The shark was originally measured to be 36 feet (11 meters) long. This shark held the record for several decades until forensic technology was able to determine that the shark was actually only 17 feet long.

Unfortunately the actual capture of the shark has been lost in all the speculation over the last 150 years but I'm sure the fishermen who captured the great white beast received both the thrill and scare of a lifetime.

The jaw of this shark is on display in the British Museum of Natural History and is certainly a sight to see.

The Cuban Shark

The second largest recorded great white ever caught was that of a 21.3 (6.4 meters) caught in 1945 of the Gulf of Mexico. Six fishermen on their daily hunt for fish encountered this great white approximately 3 miles from shore while sailing in their 14-foot wooden "boat", they thought it was odd that they hadn't had a single bite in the few hours they were at sea when they soon discovered the reason why. A great white that was patrolling the area had scared all the other fish away. The six fishermen who had experience shark fishing were not only excited by this opportunity but a little scared to say the least as this shark was larger than the wooden boat that they were in. They used a tuna they had caught the day before as bait and tied a bunch of line together they allowed the shark to pull them for several miles until it got tired or so they thought, the shark then attacked the boat not once buy twice sending pieces of the boat into the water. They were only able to capture the shark using a wooden pole with a very sharp tip, harpooning it. The shark turned out to be only 16 inches long.

However as amazing as this shark tale is more recently in 1983 the largest great white ever caught (to date) was caught off the shore of Canada's Prince Edward Island. It measured 20.3 feet (6.1 meters) in length, it was caught by a lone fishermen, David Mckendrick. There is little to no information available on the capture.

Unfortunately, it is next to impossible to determine if some of the earlier catches such as the reported Port Fairy shark who was measured to be 36 feet long was not actually the largest shark caught. Over time sharks shrink in size and by the time forensic tools became available it is very possible that the shark had shrunk a considerable amount.

To read more amazing stories on great white shark captures, I recommend the following website.
http://www.jawshark.com/great_white_recorded _sizes.html#Cuban%20Monster

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