Dillon May was fishing for yellowfin tuna on a personal boat off the coast of Venice, Louisiana, final month when the water started to churn. Soon the ocean erupted into mayhem as a whole bunch of sharks started a large feeding frenzy on a college of baitfish.
Fishermen trying to find yellowfin tuna got here throughout a chaotic scene of sharks in a feeding frenzy off the coast of Venice, Louisiana, not too long ago posted footage reveals. pic.twitter.com/qooI0sIRCd
— Storyful (@Storyful) February 28, 2023
The sharks chased the ball of baitfish—seemingly menhaden—towards the boat, looking for shelter beneath and across the boat. By now the Jacksonville man had gotten out his telephone to video the boiling water, and the footage has since gone viral.
The sharks pushed proper as much as the fishing boat, slapping their tails towards the hull and spraying fishermen with water as they fed. Dorsal fins, our bodies, and tails of the reasonably sized sharks thrash above and beneath the floor. They are most definitely bull sharks, which attain 5 to eight ft in size and are plentiful this time of yr within the Gulf of Mexico, when baitfish (and their predators) migrate by way of the waters every spring.
Shark Sightings, and Limits, Increase within the Gulf
“Over the past 10 years I’ve seen a tremendous increase in many shark species throughout Louisiana,” says Capt. Mike Frenette, proprietor of the Redfish Lodge of Louisiana in Venice. “They’re not only in deep water at the mouth of the Mississippi River, but throughout the shallow waters of the Mississippi Delta.”
Some fishermen imagine shark numbers have elevated to maybe unprecedented numbers. For that motive, Louisiana elevated industrial shark fishing limits late final yr. The Louisiana Fisheries Commission additionally re-opened the industrial shark season, which had been closed to industrial shark fishing from April by way of June.
The Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries says the elevated limits intention to focus on extra nice hammerheads, scalloped hammerheads, clean hammerheads, nurse sharks, blacktip sharks, bull sharks, lemon sharks, sandbar sharks, silky sharks, spinner sharks, and tiger sharks. (Other sharks, akin to dusky sharks, stay protected.) The enhance was approved by the state’s Wildlife and Fisheries Commission after it realized of an analogous adjustment in federal waters.
“For the past five years, during the yellowfin tuna run, there are places at the mouth of the Mississippi River that giant dusky, bull, and possibly silky sharks attack maybe 80 percent of the large yellowfins we hook,” says Frenette. “I’ve never [before] seen the number of sharks that we now have in coastal and offshore waters of Louisiana.”
Feeding frenzies just like the one May filmed final month typically happen when predators, like sharks, scare education fish into a bait ball. The sharks work collectively to nook the baitfish close to the floor, then individually assault and feed on the prey.