Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Shark fishing from beach to be restricted
Florida plans a crackdown on shark fishing from the beach, a controversial practice that yields hair-raising videos of writhing 12-foot hammerheads being hauled ashore.
The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission will vote Feb. 20 on proposals to restrict the practice, in a plan intended to protect sharks and swimmers.
Sharks, particularly great hammerheads, can die from the physical trauma of being hauled from the water for photos and videos. And swimmers complain that they feel unsafe when the sharkfishing enthusiasts spread bloody fish parts in the water to attract sharks, although a wildlife commission report says there’s no basis for that fear.
The proposals would ban that
practice, known as chumming. They would require that sharks be left in the water with their gills submerged, rather than dragged ashore. They would require a free shorebased shark fishing permit. And they would mandate the use of circle hooks, which tend to catch on the side of the mouth, rather than J hooks, which can hook a shark in the gut.
Joshua Jorgensen, a North Palm Beach angler who has done shore-based shark fishing and stars in the popular Youtube fishing show BlacktipH, said the rules would make the activity more dangerous and less fun.
“I don’t like the permit at all,” he said. “I think it’s unnecessary. I think it’s bad for tourism.”
And he said there’s nothing wrong with the a desire to document your catch with photos or video, since you’re not going to keep it.
“Before cameras, we killed everything,” he said. “We wanted people to see what we caught. That’s what sport fishermen are. You don’t eat sharks. You don’t eat sailfish. But you want to take a picture of it.”
David Shiffman, Liber Ero Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Conservation Biology at Simon Fraser University in Canada, who has studied shark fishing in Florida, said that many sharks released alive later die from the experience. In the case of protected species, such as the fearsome but fragile great hammerhead, he noted that it’s illegal anyway to haul them out of the water.
“Land-based shark anglers would often drag their catch totally out of the water where it couldn’t breathe and its organs lacked the buoyant support of water, and did so by dragging them across sand, concrete or wood (depending on if it’s a beach or pier) causing numerous injuries,” said Shiffman, who studied the practices as a graduate student at the University of Miami.
“Permanent gill damage can ensue from just a few minutes of air exposure, and anglers often left their catch out of the water for much longer than that until it stopped flopping so they felt safe approaching the animal.”
The wildlife commission, a seven-member board appointed by the governor, is expected to approve the proposals in some form, since it had already given a green light to imposing restrictions. The commission will consider them during a two-day meeting in Gainesville.
Jorgensen criticized the rule requiring that sharks be left in the water, except to briefly lift a shark’s head out to remove a hook. Although the state says the rule won’t be interpreted to require anglers to sacrifice their own safety, Jorgensen said the mandate to leave the sharks in the water will place people in danger.
“It’s ridiculous,” he said. “How are you supposed to safely handle a shark? You have to take him out of the water. You’re trying to take the hook out of him and all of a sudden the shark runs into you and bites you. That’s a disaster waiting to happen.”
But Shiffman said it was “nonsense” for fishermen to claim they needed to bring the shark ashore to safely remove the hook. He said the shark would fare better if the hook were left in, rather than being handled so roughly and prevented from breathing.
The proposed ban on chumming would be imposed to respond to concerns from swimmers and coastal cities that the practice attracts sharks. A report by the wildlife commission’s staff said there’s no basis for this fear.
“Sharks regularly inhabit and feed in nearshore waters and there is no correlation between fishing and the likelihood of a shark bite occurring in nearby waters,” the report states.
But the report recommends the chumming ban anyway when fishing from beaches, “in order to address safety concerns related to the shore-based shark fishery.”