Lure of the big catch robs ocean of valued species
By SUE CARLTON
Published June 5, 2006
Fishing I get.
Growing up in Miami, we fished any weekend we could. I remember the feel of hooking into a barracuda or a dolphin the fish, not the mammal, the taut line, the fun in the fight to bring him in.
We ate what we kept. To those 'cudas, we said thanks for the good fight and watched them swim away. This only made sense. Maybe we'd do battle again another day.
Two weeks ago, a fisherman from Port Charlotte hooked a huge hammerhead shark in Boca Grande Pass.
More than 14 feet long, it weighed in at an estimated 1,280 pounds, likely a record.
(Another hammerhead, this one 750 pounds, had been caught there a couple of weeks earlier, its body later buried in an orange grove.)
The potential-record fish wasn't eaten or even harvested for its fin, a delicacy in some corners. The fisherman said he had been after a record shark for years.
This I don't get.
Not that boring-looking fish deserve an uglier fate, but hammerheads are a reminder of how fascinating the world is, biologically speaking.
That tool-like apparatus that gives them their name spreads their eyes wide and has their nostrils working in stereo. They use it as a metal detector to find those yummy rays in the sand.
Scientists say they use the hammer as a tool to pin down their prey, a nicely efficient arrangement.
Shark experts can't say how many of the sharks are out there (because unlike, say, bears, they won't stay in one place to be counted). But they know the general shark population has dwindled.
For some recreational anglers, Jaws made the hunt seem like so much fun.
"That is definitely what started this craze of recreational fishermen looking to get one big monster,'' said marine biologist Dean Grubbs of the Virginia Institute of Marine Science shark ecology program.
The body of that massive hammerhead was donated by the fisherman to the Mote Marine Laboratory in Sarasota.
Mote officials said they don't encourage killing sharks, particularly large ones that help sustain the species, and that they'd rather see them tagged and let loose.
Diplomatically, they also said they appreciated that the shark had been donated to science.
Mote, where the animal will be studied and displayed, I guess is a better resting place than an orange grove.
"Once it has been unfortunately killed, we're going to try to make the most of it,'' said John Tyminski, senior biologist at the Center for Shark Research at Mote.
Saturday mornings, I like to hear Capt. Mel, a.k.a. Mel Berman, on his radio fishing show on 970-WFLA.
Fishermen call in to jaw about monster reds and good mullet, lures and live bait, kayaking and fishing the flats.
They also talk catch-and-release. They debate the best way to handle fish that you don't intend to keep so they don't die anyway once you let them go.
When talk turned to the hammerheads, some were upset.
"I think over the years people have developed a sort of sense of life about what goes on in our waters that they didn't have 10, 15, 20 years ago,'' Berman said. "In those days, we thought fish were infinite ... but now people are getting a lot more aware of protecting the resource.''
In a poll on his Web site, www.capmel.com, 39 percent of those who answered by Friday afternoon thought killing a hammerhead in pursuit of a record was "certainly'' okay.
But 61 percent voted "No. Never.''
Three cheers for sharks.
At Mote, marine biologists discovered that the hammerhead was almost definitely pregnant, meaning she could have given birth to 20 to 40 pups.
Which makes all this seem even more of a waste.
Sue Carlton can be reached at carlton@sptimes.com.