A HUNTER fisherman has earned a story worthy of his craft off Port Stephens after recording what may be the area’s first human encounter with a whale shark.
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Steve Currie’s Saturday fishing trip may have turned up no marlin, but spotting the juvenile herbivore gave them a magical moment – and they have the video to prove it.
The Warners Bay fisherman was out with friend Phil Burgin and son-in-law Dan Wallace at an area known as the car park, roughly 50 kilometres from Port Stephens, when they spotted an unusual glint.
“We saw something on the surface and we thought it was a marlin lying there like they do sometimes,” he said.
“We got closer and it wasn’t a marlin. I thought it was a shark so we stopped, and then it came to us.”
Whale sharks, a vulnerable species, are a close relative of the wobbegong. They are one of only three species of filter-feeding sharks and typically found in warm waters, including on Western Australia’s Ningaloo Reef.
Mr Currie estimated the creature was about six metres long, and likely a juvenile.
It was attracted by water breaking the surface near the idling motor, leading it to bump against the boat in the hope of a plankton feast.
It then gave the boat “a pretty decent bump” before taking off and disappearing.
“Once he worked out it was a bit harder than he thought, he was gone,” Mr Currie said.
Mr Currie said the one low of his fishing expedition was a lack of luck chasing his original quarry, the marlin.
“But that was an experience in its own right.” NSW Department of Primary Industries said the find “certainly is an unusual sighting” for the area, pointing to the East Australian Current pushing these tropical species further south as an explanation.
Port Stephens fishing doyen John “Stinker’ Clarke said he had never heard of a whale shark in his patch but warm water species including mangrove jack and emperor were known to pop up.
Dugong sightings in the area proved the unusual was not impossible, he said.
“It’s never ever been reported since I’ve been here [but] over the 30 years that I’ve been reporting on fishing here, I’m finding an increase in the number of tropical fish due to the currents,” Mr Clarke said.