Steve Fernandez has seen all types of sharks up close, but he’s never had his face a few inches away from a great white shark — until Sunday.
Fernandez, a 29-year-old native of Breezy Point, was just wrapping up yet another fishing adventure with his buddies about a mile off Rockaway Beach when they spotted what looked like a great white shark.
“We put our hook in the water, got it next to the boat and that’s when we realized it was a great white,” he told The Post. “I’ve been fishing my whole life but I’ve never seen one a mile off the beach.”
“I probably know more about fishing than I know about myself,” he added. “As soon as we saw it, there’s no mistaking it. It’s basically a miniature version of the shark you see in the movie ‘Jaws.’”
Fernandez said they weren’t that far away from 116th Street.
“We were close enough that we could still see the colors of the bathing suits of the people on the beach,” he said.
The shark turned out to be an 80-pound baby great white whose mother — who Fernandez guessed was about 600 pounds — was swimming a little farther out.
Great white sharks are protected by New York state regulations, which require the giant animal to be returned to the water “with minimum of injury.” Before Fernandez and his friends let the shark go, they took a few “shark selfies” to commemorate the moment.
“It was an amazing way to end the day,” he said.
Fernandez said this was the first time Baby Jaws had been tagged. Tagging puts information on the shark, like where it was caught and its condition, so researchers and fishermen can track it.
The group of guys didn’t go home empty-handed. They bagged a 140-pound thresher shark that was about 10 feet long. Fernandez said threshers make good steaks, and he was excited to bring some to the next barbeque he goes to.
They also caught five other blue and thresher sharks, some that weighed in at about 200 pounds. Fernandez throws most of what he catches back in the water because it’s more about the experience for him, he said.
While he has a day job as an insurance salesman, his passion is fishing and he tries to go out as much as possible. On the weekends, he works as a mate on the Prime Reel Estate Sportsfishing team, which takes people out for shark and tuna fishing.
“As long as the weather lets me and as long as there’s not too much wind, I will go out,” Fernandez said.
Their find was first reported by DNAInfo.