5 TON SHARK CATCH - FAKE OR REAL?

A friend of mine sent me a video the other day. It claims to show a 5 ton shark that was caught somewhere in Asia. It was pretty grainy and it was hard to tell what I was looking at... but it did resemble a shark...

But C'mon... Five tons? How can that be. What I want to know is this, fake or real?

I did some checking around and found very little about a 5 ton shark being caught... but I did run across some pictures that looked very similar to the video....

In this picture here, you can see the same orange ball...

And in this one, it looks like the same truck....

And the man standing next to it. That's the same guy.

So, I am assuming these images are from the same event.

The pictures were posted on a website and came with a open letter to the star of Animal Planet's River Monsters show - Jeremy Wade.

It claimed the giant creature was actually a 2000 Kilogram Catfish. Local Fish sellers were trying to lift it out of the water with a crane in Sarawak, Malaysia in 2009.

The confusing blog says first it was caught by local fishermen, but then it says it was found dead in a river...

I was almost ready to declare the video a fake for calling a catfish a shark... but then I happened to notice the markings on the back of the fish -- As far as I know, you only see those dots on a whale shark...

Based on the evidence, I am judging the video to be real... It was a shark...and probably weighed 5 tons if not more!

FOOD FOR THOUGHT

harks are a group of fish characterized by a cartilaginous skeleton, five to seven gill slits on the sides of the head, and pectoral fins that are not fused to the head. Modern sharks are classified within the clade Selachimorpha (or Selachii), and are the sister group to the rays. However, the term "shark" has also been used for extinct members of the subclass Elasmobranchii outside the Selachimorpha, such as Cladoselache and Xenacanthus. Under this broader definition, the earliest known sharks date from more than 420 million years ago.

Since then, sharks have diversified into over 470 species. They range in size from the small dwarf lanternshark (Etmopterus perryi), a deep sea species of only 17 centimetres (6.7 in) in length, to the whale shark (Rhincodon typus), the largest fish in the world, which reaches approximately 12 metres (39 ft). Sharks are found in all seas and are common to depths of 2,000 metres (6,600 ft). They generally do not live in freshwater although there are a few known exceptions, such as the bull shark and the river shark, which can survive in both seawater and freshwater.[2] They breathe through five to seven gill slits. Sharks have a covering of dermal denticles that protects their skin from damage and parasites in addition to improving their fluid dynamics. They have several sets of replaceable teeth.[3]

Well-known species such as the great white shark, tiger shark, blue shark, mako shark, and the hammerhead shark are apex predators—organisms at the top of their underwater food chain.