Surf Travel 27

Craig Clasen uses his knife to kill a 12 ft. Tiger Shark

‘Once I shot it in the gills I felt a moral obligation to finish the job,’ says Craig.

‘I didn’t want it to go on any longer than it had to. I shot the fish like I would do any other fish and worked it up closer and did my best to kill it as humanely as possible.

‘I speared it in the gills which I knew would kill it and from that I tried to put a shaft into its brain as quickly as possible.

‘I shot it six times in the head with a spear and I wasn’t having much luck - it was a slow drawn out process.

‘Sharks are so resilient and so tough from millions of years of evolution they are just survivors.

‘The best way and quickest way to finish the job and kill the shark and recover it was to get a rope around its tail, drag it from the back of the boat and attempt to drown it.

‘In the end we had put a knife its skull once I got lose enough to it and use a long blade knife even after trying to drown it.’