Florida fishers break ranks to denounce cruelty to fish

(Beth Clifton collage)

Nothing suggests fishers are becoming as sensitive as fish themselves, but even discussing fish sentience & suffering marks a sea change

            SARASOTA, Florida––Cruelty to fish,  just a few years ago,  was a topic attracting little attention,  and only derision from media serving recreational fishers,  but three topics hotly discussed in Florida during October 2020 suggest the worm may be turning,  and not just on a hook.

Tim Trone,  of Havana,  Florida,  in mid-October landed a 110-pound blue catfish on the Chattahoochee River,  which forms part of the Georgia/Florida border.  Caught on the Georgia side,  the five-foot catfish,  48 inches in girth,  broke the state record by 17 pounds.

But along with congratulations,  self-described fellow “sportsman” Mitchell Willetts of McClatchy Newspapers reported,  Trone “is also catching heat for the rare fish’s death.”

Man eating a grouper sandwich.
(Beth Clifton collage)

“I always cut them loose”––so why catch them?

Added Willetts,  “Trone was upset the fish died,  saying he worked hard to keep it alive long enough to weigh and release back into the wild.”

Claimed Trone,  “I never keep bluecat.  I always cut them loose.  This fish went from wide open to just nothing.  I babied this fish, can’t describe how I feel.  Depressing for sure.”

That fish story broke just three days after Miami Herald reporter Gwen Filosa on October 13, 2020 detailed multiple charges filed against Yansel Garrido,  32,  of Callahan,  near Jacksonville,  for posting videos and photos to Facebook showing “a protected Goliath grouper being filleted,  a batch of undersized lobster on the grill and an undersized nurse shark placed in a swimming pool that is treated with chlorine at his vacation rental in Marathon,  according to the Florida Fish & Wildlife Conservation Commission.”

Yansel Garrido.  (Beth Clifton collage)

Jailed pending $18,101 bond

Garrido,  Filosa continued,  was “locked up at a Monroe County jail,”  pending posting $18,101 bond.

“The investigation began on September 23,  2020,”  Filosa wrote,  “after someone sent Florida Fish & Wildlife Conservation Commission captain David Dipre a video” showing the shark being “‘tormented’ by being placed in chlorinated water and being repeatedly handled.

At about 24 inches long,  the shark was less than half the legal minimum of 54 inches long for being a legal catch.

(Beth Clifton collage)

Denounces fish farm

Florida Sportsman contributing editor David McGrath on October 16,  2020 vehemently denounced a “proposed fish farm in the Gulf of Mexico for which a Hawaii-based company,  Ocean Era Corp.,  is seeking a permit from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.”

The “reported location of 45 miles southwest of Sarasota,  Florida,  puts it smack dab in the middle of the state’s fishing grounds,”  McGrath objected.

“A chain link cage, anchored to the sea floor 130 feet below,  with 20,000 almaco jack fish packed in like cattle,  in a suspended swarm with waste and pharmaceuticals,  would alter the ecology and pollute and deform the uncorrupted Eastern Gulf,”  McGrath specified,  describing similar problems already occurring at the Ocean Era facility in Hawaii.

(Beth Clifton collage)

“‘Leakage’ is common and escape risk high”

“‘Leakage’ is common and escape risk high for the penned fish,”  McGrath charged,  adding that the fish are “invariably infected with skin fluke parasites.”

Ocean Era,  McGrath said,  also admits “to hazards for large fish and mammals (dolphins and whales) attracted to the cages,”  who “can become trapped inside and die,  as happened recently with an endangered tiger shark and a monk seal.”

But the environmental arguments were only the beginning of McGrath’s case against the proposed fish farm.

(Beth Clifton collage)

“I plead also on behalf of the caged fish”

“I plead also on behalf of the caged fish,”  McGrath wrote.  “I know the freedom, speed and magnificence of the nearer dwelling native amberjack,  to which the almaco jack is a close cousin,   an offshore pelagic,  a silvery torpedo high in the food chain who prowls the open ocean for prey (not pellets) in depths of 800 to 1,000 feet.

“In Ocean Era’s net pens,  they cannot roam,”  McGrath summed up,  sounding more like an animal rights advocate than someone who kills fish for fun.  “They are confined in a watery cell at a shallow and unaccustomed depth;  and they lead an artificial,  immured existence before being slaughtered and frozen for shipment.”

Conservation issues,  however,  remain almost the only concern for fish voiced at the regulatory level––even warm-blooded fish,  like tuna,  and fish as potentially long-lived as sharks,  and even when international policy decisions favor some of the most aggressively exploited fish species.

(Beth Clifton collage)

Tuna released from Mediterranean sea pens

From Malta,  in the Mediterranean Sea,  for instance,  came word via Victor Paul Borg,  writing for the digital newspaper The Shift,  that “3,500 tuna held in two massive cages affixed to boats that had been drifting at sea for a year have finally been released,”  as result of “legal action in the criminal court by the Department of Fisheries & Aquaculture.

Each of the allegedly illegally trapped tuna was potentially “worth thousands of euro,”  Borg noted,  but the Malta Department of Fisheries & Aquaculture “had come under huge pressure from the European Union Commission,  which initiated legal proceedings against Malta last May over slack controls of the tuna penning industry in breach of E.U. regulations.”

That “huge pressure,”  however,  was meant to permit further commercial use of tuna,  whose numbers circa 2000 had fallen so low as to jeopardize the continued profitability of the tuna industry.

(Beth Clifton collage)

Tuna farming covers for poaching

The E.U. regulations in question,  along with “two recommendations by the International Commission for Conservation of the Atlantic Tuna,”  Borg explained,  are “part of a recovery plan” for the tuna “designed to run from 2007 to 2022.”

Added Borg,  “Controls are also being progressively tightened to counter pirate fishing.  The potential for the farms to launder pirate fishing became dramatically evident in late 2018 when a Europol investigation named Operation Tarantelo found that an estimated 2.5 million kilos of illegally caught tuna – double the amount of the legal catch – was entering the European market every year.  Malta was one of the main sources of illegally caught tuna.  The farms were smuggling the tuna overland to Spain under cover of duplicate,  fraudulent paperwork.”

(Beth Clifton collage)

Quest for COVID-19 vaccine could kill sharks

Sky News reporter Aisha Zahid,  meanwhile,  amplified a September 28,  2020 warning from the California-based organization Shark Allies that the discovery and production of vaccine for the COVID-19 coronavirus might mean that  “Half a million sharks could be killed for squalene.”

Squalene,  Zahid explained,  is “a natural oil made in the liver of sharks,”  which is often “used as an adjuvant in medicine––an ingredient that increases the effectiveness of a vaccine by creating a stronger immune response.”

The British pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline “currently uses shark squalene in flu vaccines,”  Zahid continued.  “The company said [in May 2020] that it would manufacture a billion doses of this adjuvant for potential use in coronavirus vaccines.

(Beth Clifton collage)

“Shark Allies suggests that if the world’s population [each] received one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine containing the liver oil,  around 250,000 sharks would need to be slaughtered,”  Zahid wrote.

“Scientists are testing synthetic alternatives to avoid threatening shark populations,”  Zahid finished on a hopeful note.

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