Anyone who has spent time fishing the ocean has experienced the heartache of a beautiful catch lost to sharks. But usually, a tuna or other sport fish is inevitably torn in half as its fleeing runs on the line draw the attention of larger predators nearby. The case was a little different for a commercial fisherman, who pulled in a swordfish only to find its flesh had been mysteriously chomped throughout its entire body in a polka-dot manner.
“Man, he’s been savaged,” boat captain TK Walker dishearteningly acknowledges in the video published to TK Offshore Fishing, a YouTube account following the work aboard a commercial long-lining vessel in the Coral Sea and the South Pacific.
It turns out, though, the fish wasn’t attacked by some otherworldly being but by one whose name matches the handiwork—A cookie-cutter shark.
Cookie-cutter sharks are strange sea creatures. According to the Florida Museum, they live in the deep ocean throughout the globe at depths below 3,000 feet during the day and rising to 300 feet to feed at night. They grow between just one and two feet. Yet their parasitic feeding style is unnerving—taking two-inch craters of flesh out of larger fish. Their wounds are not designed to kill larger animals but can lead to other diseases and infections.
Cookie-cutter sharks are rare to encounter because of the depths they live in. But a rise of reports have continued to trickle in the past few years with scenes like the one captured from TK Fishing. Yet much about the cookie-cutter shark remains a mystery. So make haste slowly to land those sport fish before they end up looking like the remnants of a sheet of dough for the next holiday party.
Holy smokes that is wild! (Remind me to not SWIM there…)