Charter fishing boat hooks great white shark

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. - What started out as a slow day on the water for some people on a charter fishing boat out of Fort Lauderdale, Florida, suddenly became a day to remember.

They had hooked a 13-foot great white shark.

"We didn't know what it was going to be but we finally laid eyes on it and it was like seeing a unicorn, we were just all blown away," Josh Bieber said. "We were out there for probably a good three hours with not much activity. So we were just kind of lounging around, enjoying the sun and all of a sudden pretty much the entire boat started yanking down, so we knew we hooked a big one."

The 13-foot shark likely weighed more than a thousand pounds, the crew estimated.

"Slow day, flag calm, very slow fishing. Took a long time, eventually, we got a big bite and it was a hell of a fight," Paul Paolucci said. "Took everyone on the boat to catch it."

The fishermen pulled the shark close enough to the boat to shoot videos and take photos. Then hey let the shark go.

Conservation scientists consider the great white shark to be a vulnerable species, so several federal laws protect them.