Record-Breaking Shark Killed on Reality TV Show

News of a record-breaking shark capture in Southern California made headlines this week, with a group of fisherman hooking an eye-popping 1,323-pound mako shark off the coast of Huntington Beach on Monday. And reality television will bring the chum-filled escapade into your home, the LA Times reports. The capture—it's possibly the largest mako shark ever caught, and among the top 0.5% of all fish on record, the Times separately reports—was filmed by the Outdoor Channel hunting show Jim Shockey's The Professionals.

One shark conservationist says the giant fish should have been released instead of killed. "These kind of reality shows are not reality. The reality is we’re overfishing sharks," he said. But the fishermen defend their catch, saying state law allows individuals to catch up to two mako per day. "We only kept one mako for a total of 18 passengers out there three days," says the captain of the fishing trip. "It’s not hurting the population," adds another fisherman, who tells KTLA what it took to capture the beast: more than two hours and a quarter-mile of line. (More sharks stories.)