Stunning footage of roughly 10 sharks feeding on a wahoo emerged on social media on April 18, redefining what it means to “pay the tax man.” Spearfisherman Jose Liccardo shot the footage on Sept. 1, 2019, but an Instagram account for fishing merch brand Fuck the Taxman resurfaced it.
Details on the video are sparse, but it begins with a shot looking down the stock of a speargun at a large wahoo swimming near the surface of the water. Liccardo takes aim and shoots the fish. The next frame switches to a different point of view, where the speared fish is lower in the water column and already surrounded by four sharks. One of the sharks bites into the fish and thrashes it around, starting a feeding frenzy. The other sharks join in and narrowly avoid getting tangled in Liccardo’s line.
Pretty soon even more sharks swim into the frame and circle the carcass, which is now surrounded by a cloud of its own shredded flesh. It’s hard to tell how many sharks are actually present, but between three and nine feed on the wahoo at any given time throughout the video.
Liccardo surfaces for a moment and the camera pans to the boat, where a small crew stands on board. By this point, his line connecting the fish to his speargun has been severed, presumably by one of the sharks feeding on the wahoo.
“You should have helped me,” he calls to his crew. This lack of backup from other divers led to some griping in the comments section of the video, where a few users suggested with varying degrees of seriousness that he should get new partners.
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The Gambier Islands are an archipelago in French Polynesia, and their waters are home to some 16 species of sharks. The sharks in the video have rounded noses, black markings on the tail, and are of medium size, all features reminiscent of the gray reef shark, a species known to live in the area. (They lack the classic ink-dipped look on the dorsal fin that blacktip sharks are known for.)
Another post on Liccardo’s page from the same day shows a boat full of fish and a six-man crew, a sign that despite losing the wahoo, their day wasn’t a total wash. Liccardo is an experienced diver who also made headlines last month when he posted face-to-face footage of a sea lion fighting him for a white seabass.