Join Fox News for access to this content Plus special access to select articles and other premium content with your account – free of charge. Please enter a valid email address. WARNING: This footage may be disturbing to some viewers North Florida beachgoers were surprised when an unusual marine animal got caught on a fishing rod this week. Onlooker Brooke Gamble posted footage of the incident that took place at Miramar Beach near Destin, Florida, on Sunday, which appears to show dozens of people looking on as a fisherman spent hours attempting to reel in a large catch. Moments later, the curious crowd saw what was on the other end:  a 7-and-a-half-foot shark. “Initially, it wasn’t a huge deal because we didn’t know for sure what he had caught,” Gamble told Fox News Digital, adding that it was her first time seeing a live shark. “When it was getting closer to shore, we could see that it was a shark, and everyone around started cheering! It was exciting, to say the least.” FLORIDA VACATIONERS BEWARE! GREAT WHITE SHARK NAMED ‘PENNY’ CIRCLING WARM WATERS The shark, which was found near Destin, Florida, was nearly eight feet long. (Brooke Gamble / LOCAL NEWS X /TMX) Gamble’s video appears to show the shark getting stuck in the beach’s shallow waters when a fisherman approached it and began dragging it closer to shore. A crowd of tense onlookers can be seen gathered around the man, watching as the somewhat rare and potentially dangerous encounter unfolded. The crowd seemed amused and astonished by the catch. Several beachgoers grabbed their smartphones to record the incident. 3 GREAT WHITE SHARKS PING NEAR GEORGIA, SOUTH CAROLINA COASTS: ‘IT’S MOVING DAYS’ The seaside visitors were soon cheering for the man, though, as he wrangled the shark and brought it to the shore. “What is he thinking?” an awestruck female beachgoer can be heard asking. The spectators quickly erupted in applause after it was finally caught. They also posed for a picture with the men who helped handle the shark. A Facebook user said that the fisherman took 45 minutes to reel in the shark. (Brooke Gamble / LOCAL NEWS X /TMX) Gamble told Fox News Digital that it took the fisherman two hours to reel in the shark. “Touch it! Touch it!” one person was heard saying off-camera. Measuring tape was soon taken out to determine the shark’s length, which was seven and a half feet. According to the Smithsonian, great white sharks can grow to be as long as 20 feet, and whale sharks can exceed 60 feet. When the fun was over, a group of men took the shark back out into the ocean. A group of men appeared to release the shark back into the ocean after the spectacle was over. (Brooke Gamble / LOCAL NEWS X /TMX) There was no indication that the shark was hurt by the encounter, and Gamble is positive that the marine animal is safe and sound. “I know the shark is safe because the fisherman released the shark back into the wild,” she explained. CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP The men who helped bring it to shore and the onlookers were also safe. No additional details about the incident are available.

An alert hare, clinging barnacles, and a sly fox on an urban prowl were all honored. By PopSci Staff | Published Mar 23, 2024 8:33 AM EDT “What’s All the Fuss About?” In this photograph, the Arctic walrus who had come ashore to rest on the harbour slipway in Scarborough has lifted its head as a car passed on Foreshore Road. The image is lit by the streetlights to the left and features the town’s fishing boats in the background. Despite being taken handheld at 1/80th of a second at f/1.6, an ISO of 6400 was still needed to properly expose Thor and the slipway at 2:28am. Will Palmer, Urban Wildlife | Runner-up A fascinating photograph of a barnacle-covered soccer ball that traveled thousands of miles across the Atlantic Ocean took home top honors at the 2024 British Wildlife Photography Awards this month. Photographer Ryan Stalker snapped the image near the shores of Dorset, saying: “Although the ball is waste and should not be in the sea, I do wonder about the journey the ball has been on. From initially being lost, then spending time in the tropics where the barnacles are native and perhaps years in the open ocean before arriving in Dorset.” The photograph beat out 14,000 other entries across 10 categories to be named the Grand Prize Winner. “Ocean Drifter.” Ocean Drifter is a photo of a football that is covered in goose barnacles below the waterline. Above the water is just a football. But below the waterline is a colony of creatures. The football was washed up in Dorset after making a huge ocean journey across the Atlantic and then returned to the sea for the photo to be taken. Goose barnacles are not native to the UK but can wash up on our shores during powerful Atlantic storms. Although the ball is waste and should not be in the sea, I do wonder about the journey the ball has been on. From initially being lost, then spending time in the tropics where the barnacles are native and perhaps years in the open ocean before arriving in Dorset. However, this waste can also bring creatures that may survive in UK waters and could become invasive species. More human waste in the sea could increase the risk of more creatures making it to our shores. Image: © Ryan Stalker, British Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2024 and Winner of Coast & Marine “The British Wildlife Photography Awards brings to light the spectacular tapestry of Britain’s natural heritage,” said Will Nicholls, Director of BWPA. “This collection is more than just a gallery of images; it is a celebration, a reminder of the enduring beauty of British wildlife and a call to preserve the natural spaces that we are so fortunate to have in Britain.” “Starling at Night.” I had been observing the birds in my garden as they fed on sunflower seeds and peanuts from the feeder for some time. I aimed to capture the sense of movement and flight patterns in my images while still preserving the fine details of the birds. To achieve this, I used flash in rear curtain sync mode. Timing was crucial, and I needed to carefully balance the flash with the ambient light to record the starling’s trail at the beginning of the exposure, while a brief burst of flash would freeze the bird in mid-flight. Image: © Mark Williams/British Wildlife Photography Awards, Animal Portraits | Winner “Three Frogs in Amplexus.” Every March, our garden ponds suddenly come alive with hundreds of frogs that seem to appear overnight from nowhere. I have been photographing them for many years, and I am always fascinated and amused by their antics. Here, there has been a competition to mate with a female. For a lot of the time there is a frenzy of activity, but sometimes they freeze long enough to get a shot. The image is taken with the lens at water level, and the background is a distant larch tree. Image: © Ian Mason/British Wildlife Photography Awards, Animal Behaviour | Winner “Day Walker.” This vixen had taken up residence in an electricity substation after being pushed out of her parental territory. The fenced-off area provided her with a quiet place to rest away from the busy city. She would often walk along this wall, and I was able to capture this photo through the gaps in the metal fencing, while making the most of some striking lens flare. Image: © Simon Withyman/British Wildlife Photography Awards, Urban Wildlife | Winner “Running on Water.” I woke up at 4:45am with the hope of capturing backlit waterfowl images at Frensham Pond in Surrey. I lay down at the edge of the pond and waited for the birds to become active. As the morning progressed, rays of sunlight began to shine through trees along the edge of the pond, creating spotlights in the morning mist. This created a beautiful atmosphere, which I aimed to capture in my images. This coot was fleeing a fight, running across the water to take flight through the mist and rays of light. Image: © Max Wood/British Wildlife Photography Awards, RSPB Young British Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2024 and 15-17 Years Winner “The Tightrope Walker.” In this image, you can see a red fox walking along a tree branch at a considerable height from the ground, demonstrating that these animals are true tightrope walkers of nature. The fox is perfectly framed between the branches and its silhouette is subtly highlighted by the sun’s rays falling on it. Image: © Daniel Valverde Fernandez/British Wildlife Photography Awards, Habitat | Winner “Dancing in the Dark.” ‘Dancing in the Dark’ portrays a pair of great crested grebes engaged in their courtship ritual at sunrise. This carefully choreographed dance serves to strengthen their bonds during the mating season. The photo was captured in the early hours on an urban lake in North Tyneside – once a former mining site, now thriving with wildlife, it hosts up to four separate pairs of grebes, competing for territory and displaying their flamboyant courtship style. Spending considerable time

Americans spent more than $144.8 billion on fishing and hunting in 2022 alone, according to a survey by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Guided hunting and fishing excursions are a substantial part of that industry, but they’ve largely remained offline. Bookings are done over the phone and paid for by physical checks or cash. Mallard Bay is looking to change that. The Houston-based startup is a marketplace for consumers who hunt and fish to find and book guided tours the same way they would book a hotel online. Mallard Bay is also a vertical SaaS platform for the outfitters themselves to bring their back office online and provide additional services like marketing. The startup announced this week a $4.6 million Series A led by Soul Venture Partners with participation from existing investor Acadian Capital Ventures, and other angel investors. Logan Meaux, co-founder and CEO of Mallard Bay, told TechCrunch he got the idea for the company after a botched hunting trip with his dad back when he was in college. He thought he had booked a three-day guided duck hunt in Oklahoma. When they showed up, they found out the hunt was double booked and their only option was to hunt for one day with 13 other people. Meaux never fired a single shot. At the time, Meaux was working for his dad’s startup Waitr, which raised $24 million in venture capital before exiting in 2018, and thought he could launch a company of his own. In 2019, he and two other co-founders got to work. The original idea was to just create a marketplace like Airbnb for people to book these guided hunts. Once the company started asking outfitters and guides what they thought of the idea, they realized that they were going to need to bring more to the table to get guides to sign on. That led them to start building out Guidetech, Mallard Bay’s back office solution for outfitters. “[Outfitters] were receptive to the idea, knew that keeping up with the times was something they wanted to do, but inherently outfitters are not business owners first,” Meaux said. “They started out as guides, and they’re doing what they love, and they’re building a passion-based business. [With] us being passionate about not only outdoors and going hunting and fishing, but also the software space, we kind of brought that domain expertise to them to tell them, ‘Hey, if you guys are going to make this transition, we’re the guys for that.’” After the company got Toby Brohlin, a hunting influencer, on the platform, more outfitters started to sign up. Brohlin has booked more than $1 million in gross bookings, Meux said. The platform as a whole facilitated more than $6 million in gross bookings in 2023 and is on track to reach $30 million to $35 million in 2024. Despite the market size, and the company’s traction, Meaux said it was hard to get investors to sign on — the firm spoke to over 270 investors to raise this round — because investors didn’t understand the category or its potential. The startup also had to navigate people’s negative perceptions around hunting and ensure potential backers that this wasn’t a platform to book exotic hunting trips in Africa. Another key point the founders wanted to share with investors: When hunting and fishing are done ethically, it actually helps with conservation, something the company is passionate about. “The one thing that comes with hunting and fishing is being a conservationist,” Meaux said. “It just kind of comes with the territory because ultimately, as we were shown the ropes from our parents on how to do things, we want our kids to be able to do those same things. If you don’t have sustainable practices, sustainable wildlife management, overpopulation is detrimental to wildlife in general.” Mallard Bay co-founders, from left: Wyatt Mallett, Logan Meaux, Joel Moreau and Tam Nguyen. Image Credits: Mallard Bay While I’m not a hunter myself, and only dabble in fishing occasionally, Mallard Bay’s deal caught my eye because I can’t say I hear about hunting or fishing often in the startup and tech ecosystem. Hunting SaaS is an interesting concept! And it’s not even the only hunting-related company that’s recently raised funding: HLRBO, an online platform to make it easier to find hunting land leases, raised a $1 million seed round in February. It’s also notable how much Mallard has been able to grow since its 2021 launch. Mallard Bay’s bookings have grown 600% year over year, which is impressive for any category but notable in a category like hunting and fishing that seems relatively niche. As I’ve said before, the riches are in the niches — likely because the niche markets are never as small as they initially may seem. People in the U.S. spent over $394 billion on outdoor activities — including hunting and fishing, but also hiking, birdwatching and others — but a lot of those industries are still largely offline or reliant on low-grade, hard-to-navigate tech. I experienced this last month when I tried to find parking to hike Sedona, Arizona’s very popular Devil’s Bridge trail. I had to piece together information from multiple blogs to see whether I even needed a parking pass. There are case studies beyond Mallard Bay, too, that show these outdoor-focused applications have customer demand. Strava, an app targeting runners and bikers, boasts over 100 million users. Applications that connect people who share a common outdoorsy activity like fishing also have strong traction. Fishbrain, a social media app for fishers, has logged more than 14 million caught fish in its 12-year history. For Meaux, he knows how large this could become and despite the progress they’ve made so far, he thinks there is still so much of the market to capture and more capabilities to build into Guidetech. “I like to say that we’ve had some success, but we’re not yet successful,” Meaux said. “And that’s something I learned from my dad along the way. In his companies, even after exit, they still