Charter fishing boat captain Damon Sacco and his client Walter Chapman caught the massive creature approximately 100 miles off Cape Cod and could not believe their eyes when they realized just how big it was, the New York Post reported Saturday.
The men initially thought it was a shark but the fish turned out to be a 1,260-pound Atlantic blue marlin that is believed to be the largest ever caught on the East Coast.
Atlantic blue marlins can grow quite large and weigh up to 2,000 pounds, with females outgrowing males, according to Mass.gov.
The recent catch was just over 140 pounds shy of the world record for an Atlantic blue marlin, which was caught in Brazil, the Associated Press (AP) reported:
To catch such a huge fish off New England might be even more remarkable, said Walt Golet, director of the University of Maine Pelagic Fisheries Lab and an associate professor at the university’s marine sciences school. The water is too cold for them in the Northeast most of the year, making the window to catch a big one very narrow.
The fish’s head was on its way to the UMaine lab to determine its age, said Golet, who speculated that it could be in the range of 25 to 30 years.
