TODOS SANTOS, MEXICO — In the strangest entry yet in this year’s Shark Week, a beach angler who describes himself as “a shark’s best friend” has caught a full-grown killer whale from the beach — not to harm it, he insists, but to have a word with it.
Jimmy “Jaws” Johnson, a lifelong shark advocate, had grown alarmed by reports of orcas hunting sharks purely for their livers, a practice he considers “deeply rude.”
So he did what he felt any reasonable shark ally would do: he baited a single hook with a shark liver — donated for the cause by the nonprofit Shark Lovers of the Americas — and set out to personally deliver a warning to the pod.
The rig was not subtle. Johnson fished a Everol Special Series 30/0 on a custom 14 Shimano Tiralejo XXXL Surf Rod14-foot rod loaded with more than a mile of 300-pound braid. The bait was kayaked beyond the break through a punishing four-to-six-foot surf.
When an orca finally ate, the fight lasted more than four hours, the whale “pulling a full Free Willy,” by Johnson’s count, at least six times — launching into monster leaps that left the beach gasping.
The Shark Lovers of the Americas crew, for their part, had prepared for days. A rotating drum circle chanted on the beach for 24 straight hours before the catch, hoping that the orca — being highly intelligent — would carry a message back to its pod, Avatar-style: that humans are friends, sharks are friends, and no one’s liver is on the menu.
Crucially, the animal was never harmed. Once eased into the shallows, the orca was fitted with a specialized beacon — built, organizers say, from the same technology as shark-deterrent wetsuits — that broadcasts a gentle radioactive signal instructing nearby sharks to leave the area. It was then blessed and released, swimming off in perfect health.
This is not Johnson’s first act of interspecies diplomacy. He grew up surfing alongside sharks and now free-swims with great whites in an ongoing effort to “become one with them.
“They’re smart. They’ll understand,” Johnson said, watching the whale disappear into the swell. “Tell your friends, big fella.”
