The National Marine Fisheries Service should end shark tournaments once and for all in light of alleged violations of federal law at last weekend's Oak Bluffs Monster Shark Tournament. The Humane Society of the United States pointed out the alleged violations in a letter sent this week to Samuel D. Rauch III, deputy administrator for regulatory programs at NMFS.
At the tournament, a Boston Globe reporter accompanied some of the fishermen as they caught sharks on July 18. In her article published on July 20, reporter Tania deLuzuriaga recounted her trip with Captain Tom Maiuri aboard the vessel Lady Ashley. DeLuzuriaga reported that "[o]ver the course of the day, 12 sharks were caught. Two makos were kept: one weighed into the tournament at 208 pounds and another, caught earlier in the day, was headed for the barbecue."
NMFS regulations limit recreational fishermen to one shark per vessel per trip. (See 50 C.F.R. 635.22(c); see also nmfs.noaa.gov/sfa/hms/rec_info.htm.) Keeping two sharks from a single trip is a violation of federal law.
"The Boston Globe story suggests that Monster Shark tournament fishermen did not stop fishing for a potential prize winner after catching and keeping their first shark, as NMFS regulations apparently require," said John Grandy, senior vice president of wildlife and habitat protection for The HSUS. "If laws are broken with reporters on the vessel, it's easy to imagine what might happen when no one is watching."
Tournament fishing encourages wasteful and even illegal behavior for cash prizes. The HSUS calls upon NMFS to cancel all tournaments now on an emergency basis for this year. In the end, shark tournaments are just contests organized around and driven by huge cash prizes that result in killing globally threatened species, and they reinforce the idea that the "the only good shark is a dead one."
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The Humane Society of the United States is the nation's largest animal protection organization — backed by 10.5 million Americans, or one of every 30. For more than a half-century, The HSUS has been fighting for the protection of all animals through advocacy, education and hands-on programs. Celebrating animals and confronting cruelty — On the web at humanesociety.org.
