Two Massachusetts fishermen have caught a 1,260-pound Atlantic blue marlin, believed to be the largest of its kind ever landed on the East Coast. The massive fish, measuring over 11 feet long, was reeled in on Wednesday by charter boat captain Damon Sacco and his client, Walter Chapman, approximately 100 miles off Cape Cod in the Atlantis Canyon.
Sacco initially mistook the enormous fin breaking the water for a shark. "I got a better look at it and thought, dang, that thing’s pointed," he said, recalling his surprise at the size and shape of the billfish. Chapman, a lifelong fisherman, described the struggle to reel in the marlin as the most challenging he had ever experienced, lasting about three hours.
The catch has generated excitement among locals and experts. "People fish their entire lives and never come close to a catch like this," said Falmouth resident Katie Curran. Walt Golet, director of the University of Maine Pelagic Fisheries Lab, noted that such a large blue marlin catch is particularly remarkable for the waters off New England.
"I don’t suspect there will be a whole lot of blue marlin caught in the Atlantic in general that are going to top 1,200 pounds for the next several years," Golet stated. He explained that the colder waters off the Northeast typically make the region a narrow seasonal window for blue marlin, which are highly migratory. This makes the capture of such a specimen even more noteworthy.
The marlin's weight was just 142 pounds shy of the current world record for an Atlantic blue marlin, established in 1992 off Brazil. The fish's head has been transported to the UMaine lab for aging, with Golet estimating its age to be between 25 and 30 years. Following the scientific examination, the meat from the fish was divided among about a dozen people. Chapman mentioned plans to use the meat, joking that he wasn't going to eat a 1,200-pound fish all by himself and that some might end up in clam chowder.