Captain Chip Michalov has seen a lot of big sharks in his 20 years as an ocean fishing guide, but he’d never seen a hammerhead like this.
In June 2022, Michalov was leading a guided outing off the coast of South Carolina. A lifelong shark fisherman, Michalov has special permits to catch and tag certain species. Over the years, he’s helped scientists tag dozens of great white sharks, including some specimens up to 3,000 pounds. But on this particular day, Michalov was hot on the trail of a different quarry: hammerheads.
Michalov and his friend and client, Pete Quartuccio, knew they had a monster on the line as soon as they felt the first tug. The reels were going haywire, and not even the boat was strong enough to withstand the pull. Whatever they’d hooked, it was huge.
“She took us about four miles on a sleigh ride by towing the boat,” said Quartuccio in an interview with Field and Stream.
When the men finally succeeded in reeling in the hammerhead, they were exhausted from the chase. They managed to lift her up out of the water to snap a single photo. Then, they cleanly released the hook and let her go without a second thought.
Had they reeled her in and brought her back to shore—which is legal in South Carolina—Michalov and Quartuccio could have had her officially measured. At an estimated 1,000 pounds and nearly 14 feet long, she likely would have broken the state record.
Hammerheads, which are a common target for shark fishing in the western Atlantic, usually weigh about 500 pounds in this region. However, they can get up to 1,000 pounds and 20 feet long elsewhere. (The current official South Carolina state record for a hammerhead is 588 pounds.)
In this case, though, the anglers weren’t thinking about trying to make history. Instead, they released the shark on principle, Michalov told Field and Stream.
“It’s too beautiful a fish to kill just to be in a record book,” he said.
