July 19th 2013 will go into the history books as the worlds largest Greenland Shark and the worlds second largest fish caught on rod and reel was a fact. It was anglers Asgeir Alvestad (Pure Fishing Norway) and John Olav Florø-Larsen from Norway that achieved this mamut task on their quest for large Greenland Shark in Nedstrandsfjorden in Norway.
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1.099,25 kg. 4,49 meters long
Lucky strike, good preparations, skilled fishermen or whatever you want to call it. On the first night out, they scored big time!
After 1.5 hours of fighting with the ancient creature lurking at 700 meters, a giant Greenland Shark surfaced. Measuring it quickly to 4,66 meters long (adjusted to minimum 4,49 after the video was shot) and 2,66 meters wide.
Using a formula developed by Sverre Magnus Selbach, Professor for Norwegian University of Science and Technology: LxOxO/28901 ; 449x266x266/28901 equals a weight of 1099,25 kg.
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This was their 3.rd attempt on a Greenland Shark in this region, and they where aiming for 500+ kg. Little did they know about the outcome.
«We had studied the sea charts carefully and picked out a location on 700 meters depth on a spot that looked promising». Almost 1000 meters of rope was needed to anchor up on what was to become a world record hotspot he tells HOOKED.no.
Greenland Shark, also known as sleeper shark, lives in deep areas in the northern and arctic region, says fishingexpert Arve Lynghammar at University of Tromsø to VG Nett.
– It’s really hard to get this specie hooked. Probably only five-six speciments are caught each year.
The gear used was a 6 foot Fenwick Stand-up Offshore 60-130 lbs. For reel I picked a Penn International 50S and about 1800 meter Berkley Fireline 0,39mm. The tackle was made by Fredric Kullin, consisting of 3mm steel wire and 2 mm line. Sliding weights on 600 gram to 1,2kg. Two Owner Mutu 16/0 circle hooks presents a bait on the seabed and another a few meters above.
On two days fishing we used approx. 60 kg of bait. Mostly fish we set a side rotting for the best chum possible. Sea trout, pollock, cod, macrel etc. Squid, whale meat and seal meat is also very good. I estimate around 2 kg of bait on each hook. So for a day or two fishing, its quite a big amount of bait that’s used. We also sent down a couple of sacks with pure chum, to spread as much sent as possible down there.
Every other hour or so we had to reel up and change the bait. Lice, smaller sharks and hagfish pick on the bait, and we need to keep it fresh. It takes around 15-20 minutes to reel up from 700 meter deep, so its quite a job to make sure the Greenland Shark constantly has fresh bait to find.
Can have been alive since the 1400th century!
As the Greenland Shark grows approximately 0,5 cm a year – its estimated that the fish can be anywhere from 500-800 years old. Making this one of the oldest creatures on the planet!
Registering records in IGFA and Norway
At the moment Asgeir is not certain how Villmarksliv (responsible for the Norwegian records) and IGFA (responsible for world records) maintains its procedure on length/width for record fish released. «Regardless, its more important to me that this Greenland Shark got the chance to live on, than me getting my name in the official recordbooks.» Asgeir sais. «We will try to register it, there are changes also in this section of the world of sportsfishing, no one gains anything on the large speciments getting killed.» Asgeir tells us.
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