A Florida surfer whose hand was bitten by a shark on Sunday caught and killed what he believes to be the same shark a day later. Now, he's planning to eat the culprit.
Allen Engelman, 28, was paddling his surfboard off Palm Beach when he felt something biting his hand, the Sun Sentinel reports.
"I could feel his teeth biting into me," Engelman, a commercial fisherman, told the newspaper. "He was pulling on me with a lot of power. With my right hand I grabbed his pectoral fin. He was tugging on my hand, and I was tugging on him and he let go."
The 15 stitches Engleman received at the hospital to close the wound left him bent on revenge.
The following day, Engleman and his 5-year-old son set up their fishing gear on the shore and reeled in a seven-foot spinner shark with fin markings Engelman claimed to recognize as those of the shark that bit him.
"Now that we got the shark that bit my hand, we’re going to fillet him and eat him," he told the Palm Beach Post.
It's legal to catch spinner sharks from shore in Florida, as long as they are longer than 54 inches, according to the Palm Beach Post. Regardless, it's difficult to watch the shark struggle as it is pulled from the water.
According to the Florida Museum of Natural History, spinner sharks do not typically attack large marine mammals or humans. The shark that bit Engleman could have mistaken his hand for a fish, since the water was likely murky that day, the Sun Sentinel reported.
Killing sharks after an attack on a human (especially a fatal one) is not an unusual practice. Australia, for instance, targeted three specific species to catch and "humanely destroy" after six fatal shark attacks in two years. Opponents of the practice argue that there is no proven correlation between shark culling and a decrease in shark attacks.
George H. Burgess, director of the International Shark Attack File, has told The Huffington Post that the chances of catching a "culprit" are slim to none. "Sharks are migratory in nature," he said. "Culls are reactionary and ineffective measures. ... The reality is that you can’t really equate that with the human experience of finding that 'murderer.'"
Let alone, that nibbler.
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