While some are cowering from beaches amid reports of sharks “amassing” in record-setting numbers off East Coast shores, Tom LaCognata is braving the waters like a real-life Captain Quint from “Jaws.”
Captain LaCognata of Rockaway Fishing Charters took The Post fishing this week — three miles off Long Island’s Jones Beach on the Atlantic Ocean — to see if these man-eaters really live up to the deadliest catch hype.
Mates Gene Rudd and Tom Laible took turns fighting a thresher shark that weighs more than Shaquille O’Neal. Each time one of these sharkers tires out, they pass the fishing rod to the other angler, so they can sip water and towel off like Jake LaMotta between rounds. After a backbreaking, hour-long tug of war, the team finally reels an approximately 16-foot, 400-pound sea monster close enough to the boat to harpoon. That’s the dramatic — heart-sinking — moment when the muscular sea beast drags the line hundreds of yards back out into open water, forcing these shark bosses to begin the battle all over again.
“It’s a pretty interesting, fun game,” LaCognata, who charges $1,400 for seven-hour sharking excursions, told The Post. “You get the bite, then the chaos begins.”
It’s prime time to pursue apex predators: The East Coast has experienced a veritable sharknado of late, with more sightings — including one great white blood feast in May — in the last two years than the previous decade. A record-setting 26 were spotted last summer in Nassau County alone. Overall, the US leads the world in “unprovoked” shark attacks after a three-year decline, while the number of fatalities peaked in 2021 at 11 — topping 2020’s former high of 10.
Alarm over the 2022 season started growing in December, when a viral tweet revealed that the Ocearch Global Shark Trackers had mapped 100 tagged sharks gathering in the Atlantic Ocean near the East Coast of the US.
LaCognata, 54, told The Post he has indeed noticed a lot “more sharks” and that they’ve been “closer to shore” than ever before.
In turn, authorities are beefing up security across the region’s beaches. Earlier this month, Long Island implemented the Hempstead Town Shark Patrol, featuring lifeguards on Jet Skis that scour the water for sharks, after a fisherman spotted a 10-foot mako shark on the Long Beach Barrier Island.
“People will not want to hear this, but I often see sharks either right in the waves or just beyond the waves,” conservation biologist and Shark Week host Craig O’Connell told LI’s local news outlet after the Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation added three predator-tracking drones to its fleet.
In his 15-plus years of tournament-winning sharking, LaCognata has landed a murderer’s row of these toothy predators: From small dusky sharks to a 438-pound thresher shark — his biggest ever. He’s also hooked a monster 323-pound shortfin mako shark — a classified “man-eater” and the world’s fastest species, clocked at up to 46 miles per hour.
Read More: NYC shark boss battles real Jaws amid sightings, attacks