The FWC has proposed new laws comming in to effect next year. I did not see anything against the landbased shark fisherman. The harvest of lemon, silky, sharpnose, and sandbar is prohibited. All other sharks must be 54" at the fork. Sounds good to me cause that puts a hurtin on the finning industry especially the sandbar. The sandbar fins are the highest grade. The only thing I do not like about it is the funding of the mexican finning fleet. I think the gulf of mexico will never be right because of the poor countries to the south. I wonder about alabama and georgia?
Land Based World Record #5 short fin Mako 700lbs
Team
Land Based World Record #8 Tiger shark 928lbs
True
Land Based World Record #9 Tiger shark 949lbs
Blue
SFSC Panhandle Events Coordinator
Sounds good, especially for the Lemon Sharks. Dr. Gruber, the marine biologist is running the Lemon Shark tagging program and he told us the commercial fleet had really done a number on the population.
Very good to hear about the Lemons. It's also great to hear about the Sandbars as they are starting to show up in greater numbers on the West Coast. Hopefully in a few years they will have great numbers on the East Coast as well.
great news.
SFSC -East Coast Events Coordinator
Good!
Good!!!But again not enough and directed towards the sport fisherman that have no impact on the shark stocks.I don,t see any decline in lemon shark populations but do notice a downturn in the sandbar and dusky compared to years ago.
A Complete ban on longlining of sharks is what is truly needed to give the shark stocks time to recover from so many years of commercial overfishing.
SOUTH FLORIDA SHARK CLUB -President SFSC-Founding Member est 1983 SFSC-Website Administrator BIG HAMMER SHARK TOURNAMENT -Founder Rene Memorial Sharkathon -Founder NMFS Shark Tagger
I argued that same point Will at the last shark meeting I was at when they were talking about banning Lemon's and all the info they had was from the commercial guys not any Rec angler and one point I brought up was what are the commercial guys gonna do when they have a lemon on the other end of the long line DEAD? They said they would have to cut it loose WTF?
Soon the shark will have no commercial value in the US. The amount of longlining for large coastals has declined drasticaly but sharks take many years to grow. It takes a dusky 20years to sexual maturity. In the studies i looked at a 10' at the fork (dusky) is 34 years old. so just think how old some of them are. Our virgin timber is gone! I have the shark tagger summary where they put the first Quota of 2500 metric tons of large coastals and announced that all shark species are severely overfished. I could tell the diffrence the first year. This new law does take some of our rights but it also means these sharks can't be commercialy harvested. They need to punish who is to blame but everyone has to do there part. Take the $ out of the fish and the fish is no longer threatened.
Land Based World Record #5 short fin Mako 700lbs
Team
Land Based World Record #8 Tiger shark 928lbs
True
Land Based World Record #9 Tiger shark 949lbs
Blue
SFSC Panhandle Events Coordinator