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2002: THE YEAR THE MAKOS DISAPPEARED

8K views 59 replies 27 participants last post by  MakoMatt 
It doesn't matter what doctorfish's credentials are. What matters is whether or not what he is saying is true. As fishermen we have an obligation to know the status of the species we're targeting. Go lay out a good chum slick and see what shows up. Or what doesn't. You'll never see a tiger, hammerhead, or great white, and the chances of you catching a dusky, porbeagle, or sandbar shark are pretty slim. Sharks take a long time to reach sexual maturity, and don't produce a lot of young. As the apex predator large tigers, great whites and others were never all that plentiful so their populations were very vulnerable. Sort of like the grizzly and wolf. The movie Jaws made sharking popular and made non-thinking idiots believe that they were actually doing something good by removing these spectacular animals from the ecosystem. Even Frank Mundus, the guy who Quint was modeled after, shakes his head at what has happened to shark populations. He was famous for saying his clients were mostly a**holes. The asian market for sharkfins resulted in decimation of the shark populations in the early 80's. The photos of live sharks with fins cut off being tossed overboard are not fun to look at. The only thing that has saved the blue shark is that it is considered inedible. So, what to do? Be educated. Tag and release sharks. Be selective in what you keep e.g. fish that have healthy population levels. Go to NMFS hearings and write letters. Here is a link to the Audubon Living Ocean's program page with information on shark populations:

http://www.audubon.org/campaign/lo/seafood/sharks.html

This link is to Audubon's Living Oceans seafood website. It will tell you the status of stocks of everything from Pacific Salmon to Weakfish:

http://www.audubon.org/campaign/lo/seafood/guide.html

By the way, I'm an avid offshore fisherman, I like to eat fish, and I like to catch sharks. But I want my kids to be able to catch the same species I do. No Great Whites? What a boring ocean that would be…
 
I've been through the Panama Canal fifteen times. One time we shared the lock with a school of large tarpon. The tunnels that flood the locks are six feet in diameter, so no problem for fish or sharks to enter the locks either via the tubes or through the gates. There is a healthy population of bull sharks at the mouth of the Gatun River where it runs into the Caribbean. Bull sharks are known to run hundreds of miles up freshwater rivers. My guess is that bull sharks regularly traverse the canal. Its conceivable that a mako or two has been through - but remember, the whole middle length of the canal from Gatun Locks to the first set of locks on the Pacific side is a freshwater lake with lots of islands, a large river, and numerous streams entering it. It is a considerable distance, maybe 30 miles. Not exactly mako habitat. Lots of bass for them to eat though!
 
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