Very disturbing !

Fisherman catches 13ft killer shark off coast of Cornwall... after spending an hour and a half battling to reel it in | Mail Online

Divers pay big money to see these beautiful thersher sharks.

It is nice to think that they actually did release the shark alive.....damaged but alive.

Even though they did release the shark, the guy and his friends make it a sport to hunt the sharks annually, making the sharks struggle for hours and damage themselves with the hooks. It shouldn't be legal.

The article quotes "Thresher sharks are not known as man-eaters" - neither are more than 99% of shark species. This type of language spreads a lot of misinformation about sharks. These guys shouldn't receive positive publicity about this.

Real men get in the water, pick the fish and fight to the death with a pole spear. Or an abalone bar.

Just for the sake of argument, how is this different from any other sport fishing anywhere else in the world?

It's probably not, and catch and release can often be a bit of a misnomer.

Trout for example live in clear streams that while pretty are something of a desert in terms of their ability to support a large fish. Consequently trout live more or less on the ragged edge and the energy expended and damage done when caught and then released often starts a downward spiral ending in illness and eventually death.

Walleye are the same way in many environments. I worked for GF&P way back in the day and I dove in an area that had been heavily fished and the bottom was covered with hundreds of dead fish that had been caught and released.

A Thresher shark is primarily a pelagic shark and lives in a similarly barren environment. If they are found inshore at all it's probably due to following a school of fish into inshore waters. Consequently, the massive amount of energy expended in a long fight with a fisherman and the injury sustained could have a very similar long term effect.

The way a lot science is collected about sharks is through tagging which entails catch and release.Also the majority of tagging is done by sport fishing there are several organizations that supply tags and tracking sheets for scientific study to the sport fishing community.