Wow. Just got this forwarded to me today and I have to say it has me thinking.
http://www.thesharkcon.com/trailers.html
Watch the trailers at the bottom of the page.
As soon as you claim that you are saving the world or the environment, you are automatically doing good thing. Those on the other end of it however are victimized and the bleeding hearts are quick to rally behind any and every CAUSE that they have heard is going to help the world around them.
I am all for saving the world but there are certain fights that are so one sided and mismanaged and based on inaccurate research that it starts to crush all the great aspects of the Ocean and outdoors that we enjoy. We can no longer take certain species because they are “critically endangered” yet their research is based on one commercial fishing Captains hand written log book page from 1982 that was written just weeks after a RED TIDE that would have wiped the most fish species out anyways. (This is not conjecture on my part this is the SCIENCE that NMFS has used to determine that the Red Snapper fishery in the Gulf of Mexico is critically endangered and what caused them to shut down the fishery all together before finally opening it for a short season.)
Why is it that the science that is used to create these Marine Protection Acts is based on shoddy or nonexistent research? The ones that know when and where to find the fish are the commercial and Charter fisherman. Spearfisherman actually have eyes on the fish and can do more and better research than most scientists yet these researchers want absolutely nothing to do with the people that are out there every day and understand what is happening more so than anyone else. That they make presumptions, claim it as fact, and base their regulations upon that is absurd.
I say we do our part and make a film for the Red Snapper, Grouper, Wahoo, Deep Water Groupers etc that the government claims we have overfished to nearly extinction.
The sharks are doing fine. Their numbers in every place that I dive have tripled in the last ten years and now that there is no pressure on them their numbers continue to grow. In South Florida it is now a “technique” to go and find Bull sharks to shoot Cobia that are following them. In more than half of the Pacific Islands you visit you lose 50% of your fish or more to sharks when schools of 5-10 or 50 sharks engulf and destroy anything that is speared.
The sharks are fine. These “researchers” need to use thier influence to create more habitats, artificial reefs, and other places that we can fish and utilize instead of destroying our resource by restricting those areas we can enjoy the ocean.
I have yet to watch this full video and would like to hear from some others their thoughts on the video and more importantly the “peril” that Sharks have been put in due to the claimed “unregulated” fishing around the world.
If we had this same film for Red Snapper and Grouper…. We would not have indefinite closures on the East Coast of the USA, a two month season in the Gulf of Mexico, and in Australia and California new closures popping up every year.
Protect your resource. Join the Fishing Rights Alliance (FRA) http://www.thefra.org/ take video and pictures of free swimming fish and contact your countries Fisheries and offer your help to produce solid research.
5 Responses to “SharkCon”
I agree, there’s definitely people out there pocketting government grants. That said,they need to get some fisho’s that don’t look like Leo from That 70′s show. The guys they are using look like the guys that tell you stories at the pub.
Sharks seem to be quite plentiful everywhere I’ve fished. That said, if any animal on Earth needs culling, it’s probably humans.
If there was any credible science, I guess we could look to that.
If you would like to see large numbers of sharks, type in ‘Hatteras Tiburones’ on Youtube. These sharks were on most Cape Hatteras’s offshore wrecks from June 2010 until Hurricane Earl in September 2010. Besides the Duskys, Silkys, Blacktips, and the usual species, the majority seemed to be Gray & Reef which have never been seen in these numbers here. Maybe the BP Gulf Oilspill ran them here? Input from anyone would be appreciated.
The problem is that none of the scientists are fisherman! They spend their time looking for fish where there are none…even in the best of times.
I remember coming into Ponce one time with a cooler stacked with hundreds of pounds of fish. A scientist came up and asked if we (Cam and I) had caught anything. Not wanting to draw attention to our success, we said – nope, just few nibbles and left. Looking back, I’m sure that “catch data” was somehow relied upon by some scientist to prove that all fish are going extinct.
It’s sad, but I don’t think there is any such thing as unbiased fisheries science anymore…the enviro’s have seen their campaign against fishing as war for a long time and we are just starting to do the same.
I remember gearing up to hit some kelp beds in Monterey, when I was approached by someone claiming to be an environmental scientist of some sort, he told me that I was a murdering and raping an already ravaged Eco system. I don’t think that he took into account that most of monterey is already protected, accept for small areas that are very difficult to get to, or un desirable to swim in. The problem is that people are so amped up to “save”, that they fail to see efforts already in place. I think that if anything is going to change it’s going to be at the hands of the people begging for it. I would happily replace my slip tip with a sensor beacon If it meant that some hippie with a degree could count how many fish are left. But the truth is that they won’t be content until they truly understand, which is where we come in. We need to challenge them come out with us and see who we are, and what we do. Maybe then they can make a better sense of whats going on instead of blindly protecting anything with a pulse.
Does anyone have an opinion on the researcher from U.C. Davis who claims to have counted the number of White Sharks off CA coast? Won’t quote the number but it was in the low hundreds.