In April 1975, Colin Ostle was fishing with a friend in the waters off Albany, on Western Australia's south coast. Like other locals, he had caught great white sharks in the area before – but on this day he snared a monster.

Spotting the large shark near the end of the day, too late to try and reel it in with a fishing line, Ostle managed to lasso the shark. The animal was so powerful in its attempts to get free that the tuna fishing boat was in danger of tipping. It took several hours for the fishermen and their enormous catch to reach the Albany wharf, where the shark was lifted by a mobile crane and weighed.

The great white was more than 5 metres long and weighed almost 1,500 kilograms.

By chance, John McKinnon, a photographer for the Australian News and Information Bureau, was in Albany the day Ostle caught the massive great white shark. His photos of the big catch were published in newspapers nationally and are now preserved in National Archives' collection.

The Jaws effect

Just 2 months after Ostle’s catch, Steven Spielberg's Jaws was released. Often considered the first summer blockbuster film, the story of a large and great white shark that terrorised the holiday island of Amity was a massive hit.

It also caused unknown numbers of people to become afraid of swimming in the ocean and contributed to perceptions of sharks as malevolent man-eaters.

Whether unrelated to the so-called ‘Jaws effect’, concerns over overfishing of large shark species led to great white sharks being declared a protected species in 1999.

Today, great white sharks can only be captured on camera.

See more incredible photos of Western Australia in Sea to suburbia, currently on display at the Western Australia Office.