Experts: Beached shark’s likely killer is shoreline fishing
DELRAY BEACH – The shark that washed up on a South Florida beach Tuesday morning probably didn’t die from feasting on too many of the mullet fish splashing around offshore.
Experts suspect the dead black tip shark stranded on the sand in Delray Beach died in a much more sinister way.
A man who spotted the black tip shark posted photos of it online, writing that he figured they were feeding on the schools of mullet swimming off the shore as the fish migrate south along the Atlantic coast, attracting predatory fish such as snook, tarpon, jacks, bluefish and sharks.
Gregg Weiss snapped a photo of the shark near the north end of the beach, which he thought looked like a black tip shark. He also thought he saw a smaller nurse shark nearby, and that the sharks had simply been stranded on the sand as the tide receded shortly before 6 a.m.
But even with the mullet run just off the coast, shark carcasses washing ashore is more characteristic of shoreline shark fishing, when teams of fishermen go out at night and battle big sharks to shore to pose for garish photos and videos, experts said.
Evan Orellana, of the shark conservancy Sandoway Discovery Center in Delray Beach, said one of the area’s shark fishing clubs is likely the culprit.
“We do see it very often, with these shark fishing clubs that will set up at the north end of the beach and do shark fishing at night,” said Orellana, the center’s director of education. “Because sharks have to swim to breathe, after a very long fight with fishermen, these animals are thoroughly exhausted. We tend to usually find the washed up shark the next morning that was too tired to recover.”
Orellana said the shark could have died from something else, such as an injury, a feeding accident or dramatic low tides caused by the new moon over the weekend. But “fishing is usually the most common,” he said.
Delray Beach banned shore-based shark fishing on and near stretches of public beach in 2014. The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission enacted tougher shore-based fishing restrictions last year.
The new laws require shore-based shark anglers older than 16 to take a training class and obtain a permit, even if they normally wouldn’t need a fishing license. The rules also require the immediate release of any sharks that are on a state prohibited list, such as great hammerheads. Certain gear is restricted, and chumming — using fish parts, bones and blood to attract sharks — is prohibited on the beach.
The carcass of a cownose ray that appeared to be mutilated was found nearby the black tip shark Tuesday. It looked like the ray’s pectoral fins had been sliced off.
Stephen Kajiura, a shark researcher at Florida Atlantic University, said shore fishermen need to realize that their good intentions of releasing the sharks often do not have positive outcomes.
“Fishermen might not even be realizing they’re killing the shark,” Kajiura said. “They might think they’re saving it by doing catch and release. But if you just fought it for half an hour, and it was exhausted, you might think you’re letting it go but you actually let it go while it was dying.”
Shark fishing groups, such as the South Florida Shark Club, did not respond to calls on Tuesday.
Delray Beach Fire Department personnel examined the 4-foot shark and other fish that they could not identify that appeared to have been dead for some time, according to Delray’s spokeswoman Gina Carter. It’s possible the unidentifiable fish had been used for bait, she said.
Universal Services, the company that removes trash and seaweed from the beach, took the shark and the other dead fish from the beach Tuesday afternoon.