About a mile off Rockaway Beach a group of friends was out on their boat fishing. They eventually caught and reeled in a baby great white shark. The shark was tagged and released by the fishermen. They also spotted a 10-footer in the water near their boat.
Steve Fernandez, 29, was out with his friends on Sunday afternoon when they spotted the shark. "I've seen them off shore, never really this close," said Fernandez via DNAinfo. "There's no magical fence that keeps them off the beach. They swim wherever they want to go."
Fernandez said they spotted the 10-footer circling their boat earlier in the afternoon and sometime later hooked the roughly 80 pound baby Great White.
It took the fishermen just 15 minutes to hook the shark, reel it in, tag it and then cut it loose.
“I’ve never had one right in front of my face on the boat,” Fernandez said according to Yahoo. “It was awesome.”
Great White sharks can grow to massive sizes of up to 20 feet long and around 5,000 pounds. Just 106 unprovoked great white shark attacks have occurred in U.S. waters since 1916 — 13 of them fatal.