Dana Point's Shark Wrangler-Turned-Grocer

Back in the Jaws era, Jon Mansur of Dana Point plied the sea harpooning Great White sharks -- and once freaked out Malibu swimmers with a severed shark head.

Today, as the , Mansur, 67, still fishes, but for tamer creatures.

The rest of the time, he and his business partner, Sharon, run at Dana Point harbor, where they have been at the helm or, in this case, the cutting block, for 32 years, according to his son, Todd, who is captain on a 65-foot yacht.

“I grew up driving boats and wearing a lot of hats in the fish industry,” Todd said from his ranch in Norco, complete with 16 chickens, four horses, one dog and four kids. “The industry has changed a lot since my dad started. I come from generations and generations of fishermen, and there is definitely more ethics/morals now than when Jaws first came out.”

In the 1970s, his dad and uncle Larry jumped on the shark bandwagon after all the Jaws hype and had what Jon referred to as "a few incidental catches."

“That was way before the laws changed,” Todd Mansur said. “My dad did some harpooning along with my uncle, who is now 78, and he still fishes for salmon. The first Great White they caught was a 16-footer that Sea World wanted for research. It was encased in ice and frozen on display for years.”

The elder Mansur said at the time that nobody knew much about sharks or their habits.

"Indirectly, what we did was catch more than a handful and Sea World and Scripps heard about it and contacted us," Jon Mansur recalled. "We sold the first one to Sea World for $6,500 and it weighed 3,600 pounds. There was a lot of public interest as well as biological interest in sharks back then."

The men went on to harpoon another Great White off Malibu that was about 19 feet long in the mid-1970s.

“They were on a 65-foot boat so it was a pretty big catch,” Todd Mansur said. “When they pulled it onto the back of the boat, it rolled. Next thing they knew, it started attacking them. They had to use a firearm and then later sawed off the head. They let the head drift out to sea and it washed up on the beaches in Malibu where people saw it, and were scared. They wondered what had eaten this Great White shark.”

According to Jon Mansur, it is a real adrenaline rush to pull in such a catch: "You shake a lot, it's a powerful animal."

For years, the teeth of their first Great White hung in a frame at the fish market, but they started disappearing, so Jon made a replica that is still hanging today. There is also a faux shark’s head that resembles the original catch. He keeps a few of the teeth "safe at home."

And along with daily fresh catches and fish entrees for hungry diners, there are several black and white photos of sharks hanging as reminders of the their glory days.

Jon occassionally relives those times, but said he doesn’t  fish for sharks anymore. He spends most of his mornings at the market, ordering and prepping, and then he goes out to sea and commercially harpoons swordfish.

Todd said he and his dad look forward to shark week, but if you want to see any locally, it’s “hit or miss.”

“People shouldn’t get afraid in Dana Point," he said. “We don’t see them that often and, most of the time, people don’t even realize that one swam by them when they were swimming. They tend to be small, thrasher sharks; I don’t know of any close encounters. Honestly, think the best place to watch shark week is on TV.”