# The writer reports a basking shark, 12 ft 11 in long, caught in fishermen's nets in Hobson's Bay off Williamstown on 2 May 1902. > Cite as: PLOT record c/TSWP-QH v1, Field Naturalists' Club of Victoria (1902), reported by source - **Address:** c/TSWP-QH, version 1 of 1 (https://www.plot.eco/c/TSWP-QH) - **Value:** On the 2nd May last a large shark was captured in Hobson's Bay, off Williamstown, which was quite unknown to any of the fisher- men and others who saw it. It was captured through becoming entangled in the nets of some local fishermen, which it damaged considerably, and unfortunately bruised itself a good deal in its powerful struggles to escape. Its captors immediately disembowelled it, and had it conveyed to the city for exhibition purposes, where it was secured for the Museum. It proved to be a medium-sized male specimen of the Basking Shark, Cetorhinus maximus, Gunner, and measured a total length of 1 2 feet 1 1 inches. This species, which is the only one of the genus, is a very rare visitor to Australia (Historical passage) - **About:** Williamstown - **Kind:** Reported by source - **Who said it:** Reported by community - **Period:** 1902 - **Checked:** Reviewed (step 3 of 4): PLOT checked the claim against its source. This is not independent verification. Checked by a person. - **Open questions:** None open - **Source:** The Victorian naturalist, v.19, 1902-1903 (Field Naturalists' Club of Victoria), victoriannatural19fiel, leaf 76, printed page not recorded - **The snippet in PLOT:** - **How they know:** accounts-core@0.1.0: screen\_passage@1, extract\_passage@1 (claude-opus-5-5 (Claude Code session)); locator victoriannatural19fiel, leaf 76, printed page not recorded - **Limitations:** A writer's account: context and a reason to look again, never a measurement. The writer's words for the place are kept; silence elsewhere is not absence. - **Editions:** october-26th-release - **How we found this:** Found under sourcing protocol accounts-core@0.1.0, for the question "Species written about here", in historical\_archives. Screened in on an AI proposal (Claude Opus 5.5 (AI), for review). Extracted with claude-opus-5-5 (Claude Code session), prompt extract\_passage@1; a person reviewed it before publication. - Query: Williamstown \| Williams Town \| Williams-town \| Point Gellibrand \| Gellibrand's Point \| Gellibrand Point \| Jawbone \| Greenwich Bay in archive.org/victoriannatural19fiel (archive.org OCR text, local full-text match) - Screening: include (meets criteria): A rare shark captured in Hobson's Bay off Williamstown, 2 May 1902. ## History - Version 1 (this version): first published version --- Machine-readable: https://www.plot.eco/c/TSWP-QH.json Cite as: PLOT record c/TSWP-QH v1, Field Naturalists' Club of Victoria (1902), reported by source