Big dead shark

[MikeO 5]

According to the photo caption I should feel safer now:

 

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2006/more...d.ap/index.html

[mrbubbles 0]

That sucks.

[kriptap 0]

Sad.

[Seriola 1]

Would have been amazing to see underwater...

[james 0]

Sounds like a smart guy... "It's fun hooking them, but if you get too close, they will bite," Dennis said. "And whatever they bite, they will bite off."

 

I think I may have seen that shark on my last trip on the Shear Water.

 

:-(

 

James

[Drew 0]

James,

There are a few more quotes from said smart guy:

Q: Do you feel bad?

Bucky the Smart Guy:"If he was to eat somebody one day it was worth it to get rid of him. They eat so many tarpons out there. That's how so many of us make money,"

Same thing happens everywhere in the world. Fishermen kill off predators of their target fish. Monk seals were wiped out of the Adriatic by fishermen as their yields dropped (from overfishing!)

 

More interesting is this article:

http://www.news-press.com/apps/pbcs.dll/ar...0/60524048/1075

 

The Mote Aquarium says it was a pregnant female. Florida law allows one shark catch a day. Hmmm 100 hundred fishermen, 100 sharks a day. Maybe they want to beat the mainland chinese to bringing sharks to extinction?

[Alex_Mustard 0]

Another friend gone...

[RogerC 4]

Sportfishermen are not the enemy that commercial fishermen are.

 

This guy caught one shark. Here's a table of observed catches by commercials, landing in the US, in the Southeast, over a 10 year period. Some counts are big, some are small, and it is over a 10 year period, but remember, this is only a fraction of sharks caught in the southeast area and around the world.

 

http://www.flmnh.ufl.edu/fish/sharks/csop/spcomp2.html

 

This doesn't include illegals, finners, etc.

 

If you could get rid of the commercials - and believe me, sportfisherman would help - we'd be a lot better off.

 

Every year the scuba boards get upset about a single shark coming in on some sportfisherman's boat. This year it's a hammerhead. Last year it was a tiger, remember? Year before that it was a big mako, out here in los angeles. Don't get me wrong, I'd rather these individual sharks were still swimming. But behind the scenes, not making the news, the commercial guys, legal, illegal, finners, and through wasted bycatch, are killing many, many, many more sharks. That doesn't ever make the scuba boards radar, yet it does get on the radar of the sportfisherman, to their credit. The Pacific Marine Fisheries Council just passed regulation allowing an experimental longline fishing permit back into california and oregon water. I saw no mention of it in any scuba magazine or board, other than what I posted myself. It was well covered in the sportfishing magazines I subscribe to. Why do fishermen want longliners out but divers don't care? I don't get that.

 

Don't get me wrong - I would really rather this hammerhead were still swimming, and based on what divers spend vs what fishermen spend, the florida economy would agree with me. But there are bigger enemies to apex marine life than sportfishermen. Sportfishermen work harder than we do to push commercials out, they lobby washington more than we do (now we get muddy, they are also lobbying against west coast protected area closures that divers would like, so divers and sportfishermen disagree on some issues). Get the commercials out, get them fishing sustainably with better methods, lower bycatch, and we're all better off.

[Drew 0]

Roger

you are absolutely right that commercial fishermen are bigger culprits. As for dive magazines caring, it's a tough choice to sell dive destinations (thus advertising revenues) vs getting active over something like long lining.

However bad the fishing practices are, seafood is a crucial source of food so they tend to get a lot more leeway. I don't eat seafood for that reason. Only farms that feed their aquaculture soybeans are supported by me.

Still, sport fishermen target the biggest (that means the ones who have the best genes like this hammerhead which was pregnant) and really serves no real purpose but for sport. Now if they were wresting and tackling sustainable sources, I'd have no problems at all. Sharks are already stressed enough worldwide, every surviving shark needs to be kept alive to increase the gene pool. So that's why I'm sounding off at sportfishermen too.

[seagrant 4]

I agree scubadrew.......

 

All, I have personal interest in this particular hammer caught because we regularly dive that "Old Phosphate Dock", Boca Grande right near where the channel is where the tarpon run and thus the hammers and bulls pursue them. Depending on how the tides/currents are running the tarpon can even duck in near that large round "dolphin" at one of the ends there. I've even seen on TV the tarpon followed by big hammers to and around the "dolphin" of the Old Phosphate Dock" there, once a hammer gets on a tarpon it rarely gives up.

 

I am absolutely sick about this large female being targeted. This "sport-fisherman" would never have caught her if it hadn't been for the tarpon tournament luring in all the great hammers and bulls. You know they fight those tarpon for hours sometimes and then, catch, take to weighing station, release and that tired tarpon is easy pickings for hammers and bulls. It is a circus.

 

Realize even with all those great hammers and bulls to my knowledge no one has ever been attacked by a shark while diving, wade fishing, etc at Boca Grande. With all the hubbub and "scare" we have never seen a shark (except nurse - but we call them "catfish"), never seen a bull or hammer while diving there. But then with the tidal changes, etc etc, at the pier viz can be 10 feet or less, or as much as 30. Still at the right tidal conditions & other factors when I've dove there I have to say it is absolutely the "fishiest" place with the highest biomass of fish that I've even seen while diving anywhere in the world! Thick schools of so many fish (jacks, drum, cobia, mojarra, rays, grouper, snapper, cuda etc etc) and I've counted up to 50 plus goliath grouper on that old dock, and that is only with 20 feet of viz, the fish can be just packed all around that structure, and the tarpon are huge!! Plus we regularly see manatee there while diving also.

 

So this "sport-fisherman" surely isn't making the public more safe by catching this shark because there have been no problems at Boca Grande as far as the "public" goes, so his "justification" is it is making the fishermen safe and allowing them to board their tarpon..........., how idiotic.

 

Yes commercial fisherman do huge damage, overfishing and illegal actions at times, etc., but this "sport-fisherman" targeted the largest of the sharks, he said he had been after a record for years - so how many has he killed we don't know anything about? And we find that long "steel leader line" such as he used under that dock all the time, just waiting to ensnare a manatee, etc. Of course we clean it up when we can, but sometimes there is a huge goliath grouper on the other end and you have to act fast to wrap off the line on a piling before you lose a hand in the upcoming row.

 

Plus it made me sick that this "sport-fisherman" was interviewed in the St Pete Times, our newspaper here and kept saying the shark was a "he", and "him", got rid of "him" etc. Undoubtedly others and Mote told him it was a female (it is so elementary to figure that one out on a large shark, duhhh!!), but I think the fisherman just wanted to appear more macho and no mention was made of the shark being a female with pups, even though the fisherman and the St Pete Times newspaper obviously knew cause they talked and quoted Mote Marine Lab also (Mote specializes in shark research).

 

OK, I've had my say, maybe we can change things for the future, before all the magnificent sharks in the world are gone for good out of ignorance, stupidity, greed and lack of caring and foresight. Yes this is just one shark but it made me sick the way it was presented in the St Pete Times, the title to the article with 2 horrible photos of the fisherman holding the shark's jaw open to expose the teeth reads:

 

Yes this IS the actual headline!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Word for word and comma for comma (OK I see part of this was the caption for the Sports Ill article, but it was our newspaper's sports page headline!!! And what are those "duuuuuhs" supposed to mean, the stupidity of the St Pete Times writing staff?????).

 

"DUUUUH-DUH...DUUUUH-DUH

Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water, a 14-foot, 1,280 pound shark is caught in Boca Grande Pass"

Are you nauseous yet?? Sometimes I think there is no civilization down south here.............., but I know unfortunately it is all to common across the planet.

 

Carol

[RogerC 4]

Carol, I agree with what you are saying. The only point I am trying to make is that commercial fisherman take more sharks and do more damage, whether they are targeting sharks directly for meat or fins, or getting them incidentally through bycatch.

 

Look at how much time the commercial spend fishing, look at how many hooks they put in the water. In the table I posted above, they tabulate catch per unit effort. Their basic measurement, the basic unit of effort, is 10,000 hook hours. That's 1 hook in the water for 10,000 hours or 10,000 hooks for 1 hour. 10,000 hours is 1250 8 hour days, or about 3.5 years of 8 hour days. That's a basic unit of time for a commercial fisherman, it's a lifetime of weekends for a sportfisherman.

 

And this goes on invisibly to us.

 

Lost commercial gear is a problem, too. Take a look at these links on longlines and driftnets,

 

here's some photos of longline gear. Imagine the damage they do when they are lost. And imagine the damage they do when they are not lost, just working normally. Sportfishermen have very low baycatch rates, and kill few, if any, turtles and sea mammals.

 

http://www.seashepherd.org/longline/longline.html

 

Some drift net, ghost net stuff:

 

http://www.smh.com.au/news/environment/gho...5730846319.html

 

http://www.hcseg.com/x98.xml

 

http://www.flmnh.ufl.edu/Fish/InNews/salerno2004.htm

 

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4673939

 

http://myfwc.com/Whatsnew/04/ghostnethelp-st.html

[Seriola 1]

Sportfishermen can do a lot of damage as well. Unfortunately all species of fish do not respond to fishing the same way. For example, wrasses... specific sexes are collected for aquarium trade in the tropics and here in California, male sheephead are targeted by spearfishermen. This really has a major impact on their populations, as repleneshment is based on those single males who guard harems of mature females.

 

Commercials do the most damage when you measure biomass, but you have to look at how much damage overall has been done to our coastal environments. Not just by fishermen, which is unfortunate for fishermen and any other stakeholder because we feel the consequences directly. In California it has gotten to the point where marine science is very concerned with biodiversity, and this has led to the big push for marine protected areas. I really wish sportfishermen would jump onboard with MPAs soon, otherwise they will be left behind and decisions made without them. So far as I know they are the only major stakeholder that walks away from discussions... its like shooting yourself in the foot. The only way for sportifishing to survive is to embrace conservation efforts.

 

Back to the shark story... I have to backup subadru on the impact of this single event. With shark populations in so much trouble, this certainly doesn't help... and I think sportfishermen need to be doing everything they can to help.

[DeanB 19]

A few years a go I would have laughed at this thread but now I get to see the beauty of our oceans I do not eat any sea food at all.

 

Just like I'm sat here writing this in an empty house while my girlfriend visits family in Iceland, Why, because of their commercial whaling... I have my ethics and refused to give their goverment money while they continue this barbaric act.

 

But a friend said to me the other day "So why are'nt you a vegan, you walk through fields of cows, sheep etc, when you go filming".... Good point, am I a hypocrite..

 

Just a thought..

 

Dive safe

 

DeanB

[DeanB 19]

Just incase you think I missed the point..

 

We did talk about the pillage of stocks and the declining rates of our marine creatures and in the end he was swayed.. Especially when he watched a couple of my trip films..(Hats off again to the Manta's of Yap they certainly amaze people) But it was just a good point.

 

Anyway, got to go I've a fry-up waiting..

 

Dive safe

 

DeanB

[MikeVeitch 0]

Yer welcome Dean.. (that was my best Manta voice...)