| « Something Fishy In Delray Beach | Big Sharks "Fuctionally Excinct" In the Gulf of Mexico » |
Delray Beach Bans Shark Fishing...Sorta.
SHARKY'S NOTE, JULY 23, 2009. THIS DELRAY BEACH SHARK FISHING BAN IS GOOFY WITH STRANGE POLITICS...WE HAVE RECEIVED NEW INSIDE INFORMATION ON THE ISSUE. THE JULY 21, 2009 POST IS NO LONGER AUTHORITATIVE. WE ARE KEEPING THE POST ON THE SITE SO NO ONE CAN ACCUSE US OF SHENANIGANS.
Delray Beach, Florida city commissioners approved a ban on shark fishing Tuesday that prohibits fishing for Sharks at the municipal beach or within 300 feet of it...almost. A last minute appeasement play by Mayor Woodie McDuffie pried the teeth right out of the proposal. The "Shark Fishing Ban" is now worded so that the only way to violate the ban is to use cut bait to fish for Sharks. It will be very hard to regulate what bait the fishermen are using. What they want to achieve with the "Shark Fishing Ban" is really just a ban chumming the beach. Conservationists argued that chumming can cause "dependency behavior" in Sharks. This is just fancy pants talk to say that chumming will bring more Sharks in to the beach and get them to associate people with dinner-time. This is the same argument that is made against Shark Diving operations. While, this hypothesis is entirely unproven, I am glad to see it get thrown into the anti-Shark Fishing mix. Public safety hazard or not, who the hell wants chum and cut bait slicking up their beach? The people that enjoy hooking Sharks and hauling them up on the beach for macho photo-ops will obviously try to get around this "ban." Let's see if these Delray Beach conservationists have the claspers to hang around the beach to make sure no one is cutting up bait.
--Sharky
9 comments
Strangely enough it was one shark diving operation in question that was making this same charge against the fishermen last week.
Jim Abernathy speaking on behalf of the shark conservation guys who also submitted a series of shark fishing images that were found to be not from Delray Beach at all. In fact one image of a shark catch was from the Florida keys.
http://www.cdnn.info/news/eco/e090114.html
They used these images to make the case to stop shark fishing in Delray Beach.
Commercial shark divers telling sport fishermen that they could not chum for sharks and Jimmy Abernathy up there to boot!
Video here:
http://delraybeach.granicus.com/MediaPlayer.php?view_id=2&clip_id=310
The shark conservation movement should choose a new spokesperson and get a new platform. Catch and release is a good thing, lying about where images came from to score cheap points a bad thing.
If anything smells "fishy", this does - don't allow yourself to be used.
But of course, you are very much allowed to have your own opinion - regarding mine, see http://fijisharkdiving.blogspot(dot)com/2009/07/answer-to-comment(dot)html
I guess I should have answered the initial comment on this post directly before I made a new post.
The information I received about the stinky politics of this case was not initially from the above comment from "Shark Conservation?". The information I received was from a private phone call from a mutual friend that you and I share. I was not at the Delray Beach hearing either so I can only go by what I have been told. I could very well have been manipulated. I could very well be wrong. I cannot claim to be 100% informed on the matter, or any matter.
I will always be against Shark fishing. All Shark fishing. Commercial Shark Fishing for food. Trophy Shark Fishing. And even catch-and-release. I do not like Shark Fishermen. I will never like Shark fishermen. Still, if the Delray Beach city commissioners--or whatever the hell they are called--are going to ban shore-based Shark Fishing, they should go ahead and ban it outright. The chumming ban is goofy and impossible to enforce. If they are not going to ban the fishing altogether, they should simply ban the killing of Sharks or taking them off the beach. This would be easier to enforce. This was my idea, no one else's. No one put that idea in my head.
It appears that Jim Abernethy and friends misplayed this one. Perhaps I did too. I don't know for sure.
I checked out your comments on your site and they were certainly well reasoned and made a hell of a lot of sense. And I certainly respect your opinion.
But hey, unlike Dick Cheney, my opinions change all the time.
--Sharky
Me, too, I'm done with this - and I hope, "Shore Shark" and "Shark Conservation?", too!
Comment feed for this post