Fisherman charged with a felony after video surfaces of an octopus being killed
State wildlife officers last week arrested a Keys commercial fisherman on a felony animal cruelty charge. The arrest happened after a video was released by an animal rights group that investigators say shows him ripping apart an octopus on the vessel on which he worked in November.
The case stems from the video, obtained by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, that was released in April as part of a campaign to discourage people from eating stone crab claws. The video focuses mostly on the crew of the boat harvesting the claws, which PETA says is cruel toward the crustaceans, though commercial fishing advocates say the practice is sustainable because the crabs aren’t killed and the claws regenerate.
But the video also shows commercial anglers aboard the vessel Booga Man killing the octopus and beating a nurse shark against the boat’s gunwale. Both animals were caught as bycatch in a stone crab trap.
Charles Mora, 30, was booked into Monroe County jail on a $10,000 bond June 1. The arrest is significant because it is rare for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, the lead investigating agency on
the case, to seek felony charges against commercial anglers.
Mora’s attorney, Hal Schuhmacher, declined to comment. Mora was since
released on bond. His first appearance in Monroe Circuit Court is June 20.
The video was taken by a woman who asked the Booga Man crew if she could go out to sea with them on their Nov. 19 stone-crabbing trip, according to FWC investigator Christopher Mattson’s April 15 probable cause affidavit. The woman told the crew she was interested in commercial fishing and wanted to learn more about the industry, Mattson said.
PETA spokeswoman Moira Colley said the woman who took the video, Kerin Rosen, “simply expressed interest to this crew in learning about the stone crab industry.” “The crew welcomed the individual aboard, where she openly recorded workers mutilating crabs and octopuses and beating a shark against the side of the boat,” Colley said.
However, according to a September 2015 Louisville Kentucky Journal, the woman is a PETA investigator.