Rural Alaska blog: The Village : (UPDATED) Quinhagak man catches 7-foot salmon shark in Kuskokwim Bay

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Kyle Hopkins

I was born in Sitka, have lived in Kake, Skagway and Fairbanks and joined the ADN in 2005 after writing for the Anchorage Press and Fairbanks Daily News-Miner. I started blogging for the paper in 2006 with The Trail, our blog about the governor's race. Then came the Alaska Politics blog. Now I'm covering government and rural affairs and live in Anchorage with my wife, Rebecca. (Update: Our daughter Alice was born May 31. Thanks everyone for the suggestions.) E-mail me at khopkins@adn.com and find me on Twitter at twitter.com/ADNVillage.

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Rural blog: The Village

(UPDATED) Quinhagak man catches 7-foot salmon shark in Kuskokwim Bay

Posted by thevillage

Posted: July 21, 2009 - 6:55 pm

Comments (0) |

Adolph Pleasant of the Yup'ik village of Quinhagak recently caught this salmon shark in the Kuskokwim Bay -- about 20 miles from town.

"I don't know how much it weighed," he wrote, "but it took four people to put it in the boat."

...

Photo by Adolph Pleasant
That's Pleasant's 7-year-old daughter Chelsea in the back.

...

Quinhagak is home to about 660 people, roughly a mile from the Bering Sea coast and 70 miles southwest of Bethel.

"I thought it was just another halibut, but it was fighting so much, I thought it was the biggest halibut I caught," Pleasant said. He kept the jaws and gave the rest away.

...

Photo by Adolph Pleasant
Pleasant's aunt Annie Cleveland, his daughter Chelsea and the neighbors' grandkids.

...

Pleasant guessed the shark's weight at about 300 pounds.

"That is actually a small, young shark, not an adult," he said. The fisherman said he's heard of people getting sharks up to 18 feet long in the same area. (?!)

...

Photo courtesy of Adolph Pleasant

After the jump: Shark info & photos.

UPDATE: I made some calls to fishery biologists around the state, who say it's not unheard of for salmon sharks to show up in the Bering Sea. (There's salmon there, after all.) They've been found as far north as the Bering Strait:

Photo by Tamara Zeller/USFWS in Anchorage.
Patrick Kriegh, lead fisherman of the NOAA Ship Oscar Dyson, poses with a salmon shark caught in the Bering Strait in 2007, as part of an Arctic research survey in the Chukchi Sea.

Shark facts

Here's a little cheat sheet on salmon sharks, from a Daily News story in 2002:

Related to great white and mako sharks. Adults sport 50 to 60 teeth aligned in two or three rows. Their sandpaperlike skin ranges from dark blue to slate gray on top. A white underbelly has dark spots in a pattern that may be unique to individuals.

-- Life cycle: Little is known about salmon shark reproduction. Scientists speculate the females have a low reproductive rate, producing about two pups every few years. Adult salmon sharks average 6 1/2 to 8 feet in length and 300 to 500 pounds. Larger ones have been seen in Prince William Sound. They may live 25 years.

-- Range: Salmon sharks are found throughout the North Pacific and are common north of California between the Sea of Japan and the Gulf of Alaska. Scientists believe they follow large schools of fish, ranging north in the summer and south in the winter.

-- Enemies: Only humans and killer whales.

-- Diet: Limited only by the size of their bite, salmon sharks pursue salmon as well as pollock, cod, herring, flatfish, sculpins and squid.

-- Physical ability: Salmon sharks have been clocked by the U.S. Navy at speeds exceeding 50 mph. With no air bladder they can dive and ascend faster than their prey. They often attack from below, shooting from the murky depths into schooling salmon.

Source: National Marine Fisheries Service

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