Keith Poe, who has tagged more than 5,000 sharks off California, posted a video Sunday showing him hand feeding an 11-foot mako shark as though it were a pet.
Poe’s vast experience should be enough of a notice to novice fishermen that this is not something they should consider trying the next time they venture onto the ocean.
In the Facebook footage, accompanied by “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” by the late Israel Kamakawiwoʻole, the shark makes repeated passes behind and alongside Poe’s boat.
Poe on Tuesday uploaded the same video to YouTube, without music. That footage can be viewed below.
The shark, always surfacing off the stern and rising to the tuna carcass held over the port rail, seems careful to bite only the carcass instead of the hand that holds the bait.
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So why does Poe, who encountered this mako shark 47 miles west of Marina del Rey, practice this routine before he begins the tagging process?
“This was the result of my hand feeding her for hours, calming her down and getting to know each other for the capture and tagging that was come,” Poe told FTW Outdoors. “I am trying to minimize the capture shock.
“For me, it’s all about being minimally invasive and I take it very seriously.”
Poe explained that mako sharks, the fastest sharks on earth, swim swiftly and warily when they appear in his chum slick.
“When they first come to the boat they’re very aggressive because they have to kill to survive,” Poe said. “They’re usually too smart to take a large hook until I build their trust, and they don’t freak out nearly as bad once I hook them.”
Poe, who uses hand-line gear and heavy line, said this mako, which measured 10 feet, 9 inches, was hand fed for nearly four hours.
After Poe finally hooked the shark, he had it tagged and released in only 30 minutes – a remarkably brief period considering the immense power a shark of this size possesses.
Poe probably wasn’t always so painstakingly considerate. He once tagged 54 mako sharks in a single night in outer Santa Monica Bay.
But mako sharks do seem to appreciate the hand feeding. Poe cited a 12-foot shark he tagged off Santa Catalina Island in 2019. “She came back and ate out of my hand, after I tagged and released her, for another 30 minutes,” he said.
That shark, named Cinderella, is among the dozens of mako and great white sharks Poe has tagged for the Marine Conservation Science Institute.
The sharks can be tracked by the public via the institute’s Expedition White Shark app.
At the time of this post, Cinderella was more than 1,000 miles southwest of California, more than halfway between Mexico and Hawaii.
–Images are courtesy of Keith Poe