They Saw a 130-Foot Megalodon Off Chile — And the Fleet Stopped Fishing the Trench

In the winter of 1997, the fishing fleet at Iquique sat in the harbor for eleven days and wouldn’t say why. A captain working the edge of the Atacama Trench had watched something pale pace his boat — longer than his 30-meter hull, and then half again. Two other crews had their own pieces: a net sheared clean by a jaw, and a sounder trace the length of a ship that no technician could explain. The real megalodon has been extinct for millions of years — but this is the richest, deepest water in the Pacific, and 1997 was the one winter it pushed the deep up into view. If something only surfaces when the ocean forces it, what’s down there every other year, when the water is doing exactly what it’s supposed to?