FLORIDA SHARK TOURNAMENT TAKES A BIG STEP BACKWARDS

 

I grew up during the middle years of the 20^th Century, when what we might term a “conservation consciousness” was just beginning to emerge in the saltwater angling community.

When I was a boy, there was a 16-inch fork length minimum size on striped bass, which also couldn’t be legally sold in Connecticut, where I lived at the time.  Otherwise, fisheries were wide-open, with people keeping as many fish as they wanted, with no restrictions on size.  Anglers could sell their fish with no license needed (except in the case of Connecticut’s striped bass, which were sold illegally, and far more discreetly, through the back doors of shops and restaurants all along the coast).

The keeping extended to fish that weren’t wanted for food. 

Giant tuna were hauled to the dock and weighed, then carted away to a landfill or, if the angler was lucky, sold for pet food at maybe a dime per pound.  Billfish got about the same treatment, except that there weren’t any markets, so they were either dumped on land or towed out to sea.  As for sharks, all I can say is that, well into the 1980s, I heard speakers at shark-fishing seminars provide detailed advice on how to slit a shark’s belly so that the fish wouldn’t float to the surface after being dumped into a less-traveled section of Great South Bay.

Over the years, fish grew a lot more scarce and anglers grew a little more responsible.  

Killing a bunch of blue (or other species of) sharks, to weigh and show off at the dock, and then towing them back out to sea is pretty much frowned on these days, and many serious shark anglers have begun to tag and release almost all of their fish.  And, although there are still a few holdouts, the trend in shark tournaments has been to limit entries to threshers and, until this week’s closure, makos, fish which are often kept and eaten by anglers, whether they are fishing in a tournament or not.

Thus, it’s always a bit of a surprise to see a new tournament crop up that not only encourages killing large sharks, but focuses on species that, while edible, aren’t particularly prized for human consumption.

It’s not just surprising, but also disconcerting, when one of the explicitly stated goals of such tournament is to reduce the number of sharks in the sea.

Yet just such an event is scheduled to be held in Palm Beach County, Florida this weekend.

The event smacks of a tournament lost in time, of a contest held in the mid-1960s that took a wrong turn when the centuries changed, and accidentally found itself in 2022.

I remember being in my earliest teens, and reading magazine articles with titles like “The Day We Cheated the Sharks,” which described how, with luck and well-placed rifle shots, the crew of a boat managed to land a big, unmutilated blue marlin, preventing the sharks from eating it so the successful angler and crew could hang it on a scale, take some photographs, and then toss the fish in the trash.  

No one ever thought to suggest that letting the sharks eat the marlin might have been a higher and better use.

I also remember articles praising the strategy of holding shark fishing tournaments just before more prestigious “big game” tournaments were held, in order to thin out the local population of sharks so that participants in the later tournament could  weigh in and throw out more billfish.

This weekend’s event seems to be following in the latter tradition.

It’s hard to say too much more about the event, because the organizers are being very hush-hush about the whole thing.  The tournament was apparently born somewhere on Facebook, where a post by someone named Corey Hexter read

“Shark tournament…July 9^th…$100 entry fee per boat…Capt meeting July 8^th…Palm Beach weigh in…cash prizes for 1^st, 2^nd, 3^rd place…hit up @frigate83 to register”

and was accompanied by a photo of what looked like a big bull shark, with other sharks milling around in the background.  Other than that, there have been few public details, including things like where the event will be held.

Apparently, at least part of the reason for the promoters’ reticence stems from the public backlash to the tournament.  Killing sharks isn’t as popular today as it was when I was in grade school; most people have moved on since then.  Many people have objected to the tournament, citing sharks’ role in the ecosystem and the fact that many species are seriously depleted.  Some have asked the State of Florida to stop the event from moving forward, something that the state, which doesn’t regulate such events, is powerless to do.

A protest, driven largely by the diving community, was held last weekend; protesters again emphasized sharks’ role in ocean food webs.  Unfortunately, a handful of people have gone to ridiculous extremes; instead of merely protesting the event, or assuring that it is being conducted in accordance with the applicable law (which, at least so far, appears to be the case), some have resorted to threats of violence.  One of the tournament organizers, who identifies himself merely as “Captain Jason” to avoid being further targeted by the extremists, alleges that he has been victimized by

“Threats against my life, my family’s life, everything like that just because we’re holding a tournament that is literally for research.”

While any such threats would clearly be unjustifiable, organizers’ claims that the tournament is being held “for research” are also open to doubt.  Researchers will take a look at sharks entered in the event, and are likely to measure the fish, take blood and tissue samples, and do all of the other things that scientists do when presented with such opportunities.  Organizers claim that most of the fish caught will be tagged and released as well, actions that could contribute to shark science.

However, when the tournament organizers speak more generally, the real purpose of the tournament is quickly revealed:  They want people to kill more sharks, in order to prevent “depredation,” which occurs when sharks steal hooked fish before they can be boated.

Florida news website WSTPost reported that

“officials at the event said that the shark population needs to be controlled and they hope the tournament will draw public attention to it.  Captain Jason, who helps organize the tournament, said it was affecting their livelihood.  ‘Any boat that comes out and parks on the local reef immediately has 10 to 12 sharks under your boat every second or every time you go out there and fish,’ said Captain Jason.  ‘You can’t bring fish to the boat anymore because once you’re hooked, they’ll eat them."

Another tournament organizer, Robert “Fly” Navarro, claimed that

“What we’re doing brings it to the fore.  There is a small imbalance in our shark population and we would like our federal government to conduct a shark assessment.”

Given his conclusory comment regarding “imbalance,” it seems as if the only research he’s interested in is research that confirms what he already believes.

On balance, both sides have valid points.  Sharks are clearly not overpopulated, even if they might seem very abundant in certain geographic areas.  Gavin Naylor, who directs the Florida Program for Shark Research at the University of Florida, advised that

“Different species have different dynamics.  Some of the coastal species appear to be in higher numbers than they have been in times past but globally almost all species are down.”

At the same time, the depredation problem is real, and the National Marine Fisheries Service has commissioned a study to help determine its extent, impacts, and possible solutions.

In the end, it comes down to a question that has been asked—or, perhaps more accurately, should have been asked—since the first English riverkeeper killed an otter to prevent it from eating his lord’s precious trout:  Do people’s recreational interests justify killing predators, so that such people can have more fish, birds, or game for themselves?

Traditionally, the answer was “Yes,” and countless hawks, otters, wolves, seals and similar creatures were killed as a result.  Today, as we slowly grow a more realistic awareness of our place in the ecosystem, other answers more and more come to mind.

However, many anglers haven’t yet reached that level of awareness, and still believe that thinning out sharks is the right thing to do.  And those anglers aren’t limited to the southeast Florida coast.

A paper, “Clashing conservation values:  The social complexities of shark depredation,” published in the August 2022 issue of Biological Conservation, addresses the shark depredation issue from the viewpoint of recreational and commercial fishermen, including for-hire captains and spearfishermen, who operate off the coast of Queensland, Australia.  That paper takes a preliminary look at the issue not by asking the typical “Are sharks good or bad?” question often seen in angling-related debates, but rather by using a “Levels of Conflict framework” that reaches down to deeper levels of what becomes a more complex human/wildlife conflict.

Such framework establishes three different levels.  The first, “Dispute,” sets out the problem itself; in this case, fishermen think that sharks are too abundant and taking too many fish.  The paper notes that

“While it is possible conflicts may solely lie on this level and thus be solved with a technical fix, typically conflicts at this dispute level represent the surface layer of deeper conflicts.”

The second level, “Underlying Conflict,” identifies an initial dispute which is made worse because previous efforts to solve the problem have proven unsatisfactory.

“Underlying conflicts still have the same visible problems of the dispute level, but there is also a history of damage from wildlife that has been unsatisfactorily managed.  This type of conflict can create an ‘us versus them’ mentality…This mentality generally arises from the perception that previous management of the conflict was unfair, disappointing, or misleading.  For example, a farmer choosing to illegally retaliate on protected wolves despite management’s non-lethal solution to build fences.  [internal references omitted]”

The third and final conflict level is “Deep-Rooted Conflict,” in which a “perceived threat to personal values or identity” is added to the frustrations of the Underlying Conflict phase. 

“This level tends to result from the growth of underlying conflicts that align with pre-existing socio-political conflicts that stakeholders perceive as a threat to their own values or identity.  Individuals involved in the conflict tend to view their views and identities as fundamentally different from those managing the issue.  This ultimately creates another, deeper ‘us versus them’ mentality between stakeholders and managers.  Identity-based conflicts cannot be solved with dispute level fixes, and attempts to do so may widen the division further.  Conflict resolution for this level relies heavily on facilitating open dialogues between stakeholder groups.  [internal references omitted]”

The southeast Florida shark depredation conflict arguably exists on this level, with fishermen and charter boat operators unhappy, and feeling threatened, by managers who prioritize ecosystem health and maintaining shark populations above reducing shark depredation of hooked fish, and divers and conservationists feeling equally threatened by the tournament’s “varmint hunter” mentality, which sees fishermen seek to kill sharks that are neither wanted nor needed for food.

Conversations among all the parties will be needed to reach a solution that addresses the needs of all, including the sharks themselves.

What isn’t needed is an old-fashioned kill tournament, an event not too different in nature from the predator hunting contests held in inland venues, where contestants are awarded for killing coyotes, bobcats, foxes and similar creatures, animals that aren’t being hunted for food and, in many cases, not even for fur but, like the Florida sharks, merely end up in a dumpster, because someone mistakenly believed that such predators, while performing their role in the food web, kill wildlife that would be better killed by people.

It's a position without scientific support, and one that takes us back to the days when bounties were paid for dead foxes, hawks and seals.

A tournament that supports such an outlook accomplishes nothing of value, while taking us back to a time we should never want to visit again.