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Sunday, August 26, 2001

To fish, or not to fish? Rash of bites feeds debate

By SANDRA FREDERICK | News-Journal Staff Writer

NEW SMYRNA BEACH — For the past 15 years, Mike Egner has harvested the bounty of the Atlantic Ocean. He lays his longline baited with chunks of fish in the water, in search of sandbar, blacktip, bull, hammerhead, dusky and tiger sharks.

Earlier this week he worked under the stars just outside the three- mile offshore moratorium zone set by the state for the East Coast of Florida, on one of his last runs of the summer season, which ends Friday.

Egner, captain of the 45-foot fishing vessel 2nd Stage, managed a few hours' sleep with his other two crew members before it was time to pull up the lines, unhook the catch and gut and pack the meat in ice for the trip home.

"For me, this is a way of life," Egner said Thursday as he tugged ropes and knotted them to the dock outside of the Sea Harvest restaurant in New Smyrna Beach. "It's what I have done most of my life."

As shark bites continued at an alarming pace over the past week — seven along a half-mile stretch south of Ponce de Leon Inlet's jetty, an eighth in Wilbur-by-the-Sea, and another one Saturday near the Flagler Avenue approach in New Smyrna Beach — the long-running controversy about the fate of the creature gains new momentum.

The often-heated debate is being waged between commercial fishermen who want to relax restrictions on fishing and cull the shark population and scientists and conservationists who believe the long- term prospects for sharks are dim without tight limits on harvests.

Both sides also disagree on what is causing the increase in unprovoked shark attacks, especially here in Volusia, where 19 have been recorded this year alone, nearly half of the worldwide total of 40.

"Sharks are being used as a poster child," said Rusty Hudson, a Holly Hill fisherman and an advocate for fishermen's rights. "The (federal) management plan is working. We have seen a robust rebuilding pattern for sharks, and we are seeing it right now on the beaches of Florida."

The commercial fishermen maintain restrictions placed on them as part of the National Marine Fisheries Service's shark management plan, which started in the early 1990s, are behind the bumper crop of the feared predators seen along the state's beaches.

Scientists and beach officials say the increase in shark bites can be traced directly to the increase in the number of people visiting the beach.

They contend the shark still needs to be protected from overfishing.

Volusia County estimates the number of annual beachgoers at 10 million countywide.

As the debate drags on, shark fishermen continue to work the warm waters surrounding the Sunshine State outside Florida's three-mile limit, but only under an injunction issued by a federal judge in Tampa.

A lawsuit was filed by the fishing industry against the National Marine Fisheries Service in 1999. Under a temporary agreement, the season was shortened to a two-month summer season with limits remaining at 4,000 pounds of meat per trip.

The fishermen want the latest proposed 50 percent decrease lifted while the fisheries service wants to further restrict the amount of catch pulled from the ocean. A decision is expected in November.

Advocates in the fishing industry vehemently rejected the fisheries service's calculations on the number of sharks and attempts to further restrict catches outlined in a 1997 report. That is when they banded together and filed a lawsuit, said Bobby Spaeth, executive director of the Southern Offshore Fishing Association and a 30-year fishing veteran in the Gulf of Mexico.

In the past seven years, the fisheries service has decreased the take allowed per trip by 83 percent, he said.

"First it was a 60 percent decrease in what we could catch (following a 1993 mandate)," Spaeth said from his Madeira Beach seafood restaurant. "In 1997, we got another 50 percent reduction and then in 1999, they wanted to give us another 50 percent reduction."

Spaeth said the national industry pulled some 8 million pounds of shark out of the waters in 1993 prior to the regulations.

"This year we are under a million," he said. "It has a ripple effect on other fisheries as well.

"When we can't fish for sharks, we will move into other types of fishing. It's a real mess."

In the meantime, both sides wait for the lawsuit to be decided. Both have agreed to have the 1997 large coastal shark population assessment reviewed by an independent scientific source. If the science is upheld, there will be a 50 percent decrease in the days the fishermen are allowed to fish and the number of fish allowed will also go down significantly, Spaeth said.

"It's an accumulation of regulations that has made this an impossible indus try to be in," he said. "We stay in because we can't get out. A lot of us don't want to fish anymore.

"Someday soon, it will come down to everyone eating Mrs. Paul's fish sticks. That's where our industry is headed."

On the flip side, scientists, governmental agencies and conservationists say that if stringent limits are not placed on the large coastal shark industry, the well will run dry.

"We have what we call maximum sustainable yield, what you can catch on a continuing basis and what can be sustained in the long run," said Dr. Enric Cortes, a research fishery biolog ist with the National Marine Fisheries Service in Panama City. "The overall picture says there are decreases. Therefore, managers said we needed to control overall catches."

Sonya Fordham, fish conservation project manager with the Ocean Conservancy, a member of a seven-agency conservation coalition, said the federal controls are still too weak and too slow to help the spiraling effects of overfishing in the world's waters.

"There is an idea out there that the ocean is limitless and there is an abundance of sea animals to pick from," she said from her Washington, D.C, office Friday morning.

"That is not the case. The population can be depleted very rapidly," she said.

Fordham said it is a sad truth that the issue of preserving sharks is very low on the public's interest chart. The image portrayed by Hollywood and the media of the aggressive marine animal, along with the low cost of the meat at the marketplace, makes it difficult to get people aboard the preservation bandwagon.

"Sharks are especially vulnerable (to overfishing) because they grow slowly, mature late and produce a small number of young," she added. "The dusky shark species is 21 when it reproduces for the first time. That is a lot of years to survive without getting caught by fishermen."

Although the National Marine Fisheries Service didn't start regulating the shark industry until 1993, the group monitored the industry for a decade earlier, Fordham said.

The fisheries service and a host of conservation groups say that without strict guidelines for the industry, the marine animal will be on its way to the endangered list.

"Fishing for sharks is adding to the demise of the creatures around the world," said Jason Bell, director of the International Fund For Animal Welfare in South Africa. "If something is not done soon, many species (of sharks) will become extinct."

However, Bell is worried that shark bites in Central Florida may be sending the wrong message to the public, causing the tides to turn from conservation to unmanaged fishing rights.

"Humans are not a natural prey for sharks," he said. "Unfortunately movies like 'Jaws' have tainted the image of sharks worldwide. It is unfortunate but all swimmers should realize there is a potential for something like this happening. They are entering the shark's world."

He believes that the atmosphere created by events like what the world is seeing in New Smyrna Beach could be the kiss of death for the shark.

"At the end of the day it is a conservation issue," he said. "I hope people realize that."

But for Egner, the issue is simpler.

"Fishing is like farming," he said. "If you tend it, it grows. If you don't, it takes over and can't be controlled.

"We need to harvest the sharks, or we will continue to see what we are seeing now. It's that simple."

HICI Special Report — Sharks: Dangerous? Endangered?

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