Staff photo by Dan Parker
San Antonio resident Michael Ploch kneels next to a 9.5-foot tiger shark just after reeling it in at the beach in Port Aransas on Thursday, April 28. The adventure of catching the big fish started when Ploch walked to the end of Horace Caldwell Pier, then used a drone to drop his baited hook near the end of the south jetty, several hundred yards to the north. After the shark bit, Ploch walked his rod and reel down the pier, toward shore, and dropped it down to a friend, Patrick Reyes, of Poteet, standing on the beach below. Ploch then ran down to shore, took the rod again and reeled the beast in from there. Ploch said he fought the shark for more than two hours. He released it after measuring it and posing for photos with it. The shark last was seen swimming toward the horizon. Will the shark survive the shock and injury that resulted from the catch? Hard to say for sure, but tiger sharks are very hardy, according to Greg Stunz, a marine biologist who lives in Port Aransas and has been studying sharks for years. ‘Our studies show they survive catch-and-release very well,’ said Stunz, who works at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi. ‘That’s not the case for other species such as hammerheads. They seem to be more sensitive.’ Anyone worried about the possibility that they might be bitten by a shark in Port Aransas waters should note that this one was a few hundred yards offshore – far from where people normally swim – when it was hooked. And there have been only 11 confirmed and unprovoked shark attacks in the waters of Nueces County since 1911, according to the International Shark Attack File at the Florida Museum, which has been tracking shark attacks for years.
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