When fisherman Patrick Melograna felt a tug on his line near Gladesville Bridge over the Parramatta River, he knew he was onto something big.Â
But the 2½-metre, 150-kilogram mako shark exceeded even his wildest expectations, and he took almost two hours to haul in the mammoth catch.
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When fisherman Patrick Melograna felt a tug on his line near Gladesville Bridge over the Parramatta River, he knew he was onto something big. Vision courtesy: Seven News Sydney.
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2.5m shark caught near Gladesville Bridge
When fisherman Patrick Melograna felt a tug on his line near Gladesville Bridge over the Parramatta River, he knew he was onto something big. Vision courtesy: Seven News Sydney.
Mr Melograna, who was fishing for jewfish to celebrate his father's birthday, said he initially thought it was a bull shark.Â
"It was a team effort to bring this beast on board," Mr Melograna told local newspaper the Weekly Times.
He expressed surprise at finding the shark so far into Sydney Harbour.Â
"This is normally a deep-sea species, so to see one this far down the harbour is very rare indeed," he said.
"We measured it at over eight feet long and conservatively weighing in around 150kgs."
Associate professor Culum Brown, a shark expert at Macquarie University, described the sighting as "strange" and "almost unheard of".Â
"It's pretty weird, you don't usually get makos this close to land. Even seeing them from the coast is very unusual," Mr Brown told Fairfax Media.
His only guess about the shark's location is misadventure.
"Maybe it's lost â that's the only thing I can think of. There's no way it wants to come into Sydney Harbour, it's filthy. It's not even the right habitat," he said.
Mr Brown said the mako, a semi warm-blooded shark, is "super fast and super powerful".
"They have an awesome system in their body that uses their swimming muscles to retain heat."
The mako shark is listed as vulnerable, Mr Brown said, so "technically he shouldn't have caught it".
"But often you don't really know until you've got it on board â by that time it's half cactus. I'm not sure letting it go back into the harbour would be a wise thing anyway."Â