THERE WAS NO EPIC battle pitting fisherman Don Archer against a JAWS-like shark.
In fact, for the shark, the battle was over in about ten minutes.
The shark was brought to shore; its future is now in a fish market, in therapeutic oil and in trinkets and the victorious Archer is looking to his next conquest, possibly tomorrow.
For Archer, Saturday began like any other day of fishing.
He said he collected some dead chickens from a chicken farm in St Lucy, hooked them on his line, with its cork float, which he trailed about 100 yards off the Animal Flower Cave and then waited.
And when the float started to bob in the water, he knew he had caught something.
“It was a smooth skin shark,” he revealed. “It was about six feet long and weighed about 110 pounds.”
Asked about the type of fight the shark put up, Archer said, matter-of-factly: “Actually it wasn’t much of fight due to my experience. And it was quite small as well. It was out in about ten minutes.”
The hardest part, he admitted, was hauling it out of the sea. That took the help of a group of men.
Archer, a craftsman who has a handicraft stall at the Animal Flower Cave, explained: “Normally I fish here all the time and I catch about four or five a year. The biggest one I caught was about 15 feet in length and a tiger shark. That was in 2012.”
The fisherman of many years said he plans to sell the meat in the market and possibly boil some of it for its shark oil.
“I took the jaw and teeth and head and I will cure them. It’s a nice conversation piece so what I would do is take some of the teeth and make a necklace,” he mused.
His next fishing trip is tomorrow and Archer is hoping for the same luck again.
“Fishing is something that I love and I like to eat my shark,” he laughed.
• [email protected]
