The Sportfishing Conservancy announced today that world-renowned gamefish artist, angler and conservationist Guy Harvey has donated $4,000 through his Guy Harvey Ocean Foundation to sponsor the four …
Venezuela Bans Shark Finning, Establishes Shark Sanctuary
22 Jun 20127:04 PM
NOTE: This post was excerpted from an article by Douglas Main on OurAmazingPlanet. Click here to read the full article.
Some much-needed good news for sharks has come from Venezuela this week: The South American country announced it is banning shark finning in its waters and has established a new shark sanctuary.
The country became the last in the Americas to outlaw the practice of cutting off the fins of live sharks and tossing the animals back into the ocean to slowly die.
The country also has created a sanctuary where several important shark species breed, outlawing commercial shark fishing there. The sanctuary consists of 1,440 square miles (3,730 square kilometers) of the Caribbean Sea surrounding the Los Roques Archipelago, a popular tourist destination.
Pro team Member
Related Articles
Pro Team
Connect & Follow
Connect & Follow
General
Bon Appetit
Conservation Corner
Dive In
Got Photo
Get Hooked
Outdoor Adventure
SURF-UP
Travel Tips
![](mailto:?subject=Venezuela Bans Shark Finning, Establishes Shark Sanctuary&body=<a href="http://guyharvey.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/img_1501.jpg"><img title="Tiger shark - Photo courtesy of Steve Valetta" src="http://guyharvey.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/img_1501.jpg" alt="" width="450" height="300" /></a>
NOTE: This post was excerpted from an article by Douglas Main on <a title="OAP.com" href="http://www.ouramazingplanet.com" target="_blank">OurAmazingPlanet</a>. Click <a title="Venezuela Bans Shark Finning, Establishes Shark Sanctuary" href="http://www.ouramazingplanet.com/3072-venezuela-bans-shark-finning.html" target="_blank">here</a> to read the full article.
Some much-needed good news for sharks has come from Venezuela this week: The South American country announced it is banning shark finning in its waters and has established a new shark sanctuary.
The country became the last in the Americas to outlaw the practice of cutting off the fins of live sharks and tossing the animals back into the ocean to slowly die.
The country also has created a sanctuary where several important shark species breed, outlawing commercial shark fishing there. The sanctuary consists of 1,440 square miles (3,730 square kilometers) of the Caribbean Sea surrounding the Los Roques Archipelago, a popular tourist destination. https://guyharveyoutpostblog.com/venezuela-bans-shark-finning-establishes-shark-sanctuary/){kind=link}
![](mailto:?subject=Bahamas Wahoo Challenge – Day 2&body=The second and final day of fishing in Leg 1 of the <a title="BWC web site" href="http://www.bahamaswahoochallenge.com/" target="_blank">Bahamas Wahoo Challenge</a> has come to a close and all the fish have been weighed at the <a title="BBGC web site" href="http://www.biggameclubbimini.com" target="_blank">Big Game Club</a>. Airborne came on strong during day two with four fish totalling 115.3 Pounds, and Shine On came in with four fish totalling 99.65 pounds. None of the remaining competitors weighed a qualifying fish on day two.
<a href="https://guyharveyoutpostblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/shine20on202521.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-medium wp-image-275" title="Shine On - Winner of Leg 1 of the Bahamas Wahoo Challenge" src="https://guyharveyoutpostblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/shine20on202521.jpg?w=300" alt="" width="300" height="225" /></a>
Using the four best fish of the two days, Shine On came in with 116.15 pounds and Airborne in with 115.30 pounds, followed by Hit That with 42.2. The difference between 1st and second places was LESS THAN ONE POUND! https://guyharveyoutpostblog.com/bahamas-wahoo-challenge-day-2/){kind=link}
![](mailto:?subject=Tagged Sea Turtles Reporting Safe After Irma&body=Five green sea turtles that came ashore to nest on Broward County, Fl. beaches in the past couple months have reported safe to scientists with the Nova Southeastern University/ Broward County Sea Turtle Conservation Program in the wake of Hurricane Irma.
Dr. Derek Burkholder-- a research scientist at NSU's Guy Harvey Research Institute who heads the program--and colleague Glenn Goodwin, a Nova PhD student, glued satellite tags to the animals' shells after they completed depositing their eggs and were returning to the ocean. The tags beam the turtles' locations every time they surface, which is downloaded to the scientists' computers. The study subjects have kept in touch ever since-- even in the thick of Irma's onslaught.
"Everybody sought out deeper water or at least moved away from where things were rough," Goodwin wrote in an email. "Afterward, everyone returned to their normal areas, except Therese who wandered around, then ended up near Key West."
The tags usually transmit for about a year-- time enough for the scientists to try to solve several mysteries that are key to conserving the threatened and endangered reptiles: where do green and loggerhead turtles come from to nest in South Florida; how frequently do they come here; and where do they go between nesting events. Genetic samples taken during tagging will show whether sea turtle populations along the U.S. east coast are linked.
"We don't know what this population does when it leaves here," Burkholder said. "This project is to learn where they end up: who's going where and who's playing with who."
That information is vital to sea turtle conservation, Burkholder said, because it informs management decisions at the state, regional and federal levels, such as whether the animals are nesting and travelling through areas with high fishing and boating pressure that might warrant additional regulations.
<a href="https://guyharveyoutpostblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Therese20170910-Irma-002-e1507034887821.png"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-4915" src="https://guyharveyoutpostblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Therese20170910-Irma-002-e1507034887821.png" alt="" width="711" height="400" /></a>
"Giving them the protection they need when they need it and where they need it," Goodwin said.
In addition to the five with satellite tags, seven others were implanted with internal chips and wear external tags so that divers and anglers who encounter them can report their locations.
While the animals handled Irma just fine, their nests on Broward beaches did not; over half were swept away by winds and waves. Fortunately, it happened late in the nesting season rather than the mid-summer peak.
Broward County's Sea Turtle Conservation program has been in operation for 28 years -- focused primarily on monitoring and protecting nests from various threats and gauging hatching success. So far this season, surveyors have counted 3,337 nests--2,692 loggerheads; 634 greens and 11 leatherbacks on 24 miles of beach (excluding Mizell-Johnson State Park). It was a record year for greens; the previous mark was 500 in 2012. Nova Southeastern University and the Broward County Sea Turtle Conservation Program are part of a network dedicated to sea turtle conservation that includes several volunteer organizations --Sea Turtle Oversight Protection (STOP), the South Florida Audubon Society, and Sea Turtle Awareness Rescue Stranding (STARS). The volunteers work tirelessly throughout the season to help protect sea turtle hatchlings by redirecting them away from disorienting coastal lighting back to the moon- and star-lit ocean.
The three-year tagging study is funded by a $45,000 grant from the Community Foundation of Broward County. But the program could use some help, since each tag costs upwards of $4,500. The first turtle to be tagged was named George Finley (even though it's a female) after the winner of Guy Harvey Outpost's May sweepstakes.
If you would like to sponsor a tag for next season, contact Burkholder at dburkholder@nova.edu or call 954-262-3673.
https://guyharveyoutpostblog.com/tagged-sea-turtles-reporting-safe-after-irma/){kind=link}
![](mailto:?subject=Playing Tag with Roosterfish for Science&body=Roosterfish-- the hard-fighting, black-banded fish with the distinctive cock's comb dorsal fin--is one of the most sought-after recreational species in the eastern Pacific. Anglers happily catch them in the surf, from kayaks and in sport fishing boats along the coast from Mexico's Baja California to Peru using both live bait and artificial lures. They can grow to over 100 pounds, but they're not much good to eat so they've been spared from overfishing so far. But almost nothing is known about their life history, reproduction, and movements.
However, that is about to change.
Marine scientist/artist/conservationist Dr. Guy Harvey and daughter Jessica, project manager for the <a href="https://www.guyharvey.com/ocean-foundation">Guy Harvey Ocean Foundation</a>, recently completed the first-ever roosterfish tagging program in Panama.
The Harveys, together with guides and anglers in the third annual Roosterfish Tournament at Tropic Star Lodge in Pinas Bay, Panama, stuck 80 roosterfish with external streamer tags in three days. The tags bear the foundation's phone number and ask whoever recaptures the fish to report its GPS location and fork length. The crews also took some fin clips for DNA samples and sent them to the <a href="http://cnso.nova.edu/ghri/index.html">Guy Harvey Research Institute</a> at <a href="http://cnso.nova.edu/index.html">Nova Southeastern University</a> near Fort Lauderdale. And at the conclusion of the tournament, outdoors television host Mark Davis of "Big Water Adventures" and his team implanted Panama's first roosterfish with a pop-off satellite tag that tracks its movements in near real-time for about three months.
The Harveys also distributed additional tags to the Tropic Star fleet to continue the program throughout the year.
"There were no recaptures during the tournament, indicating the fish move around a bit and the population is quite large," Guy Harvey said. "This gives us a chance to study an animal that's not commercially exploited but is a very important recreational fish."
<a href="https://guyharveyoutpostblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/P8A3282.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-4809" src="https://guyharveyoutpostblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/P8A3282.jpg" alt="" width="5760" height="3840" /></a>
The Harveys and their fellow tournament participants caught the roosters by bottom fishing with live bait on downriggers or working poppers on the surface in depths of 30 to 170 feet. More than 100 fish were caught and released in three days of competition.
The Harveys said they plan to work in collaboration with the Pompano Beach, Fla.-based Gray FishTag research program which has tagged scores of roosterfish in Costa Rica and Mexico---including one satellite tag in Costa Rica that popped off after the fish travelled more than 37 miles in 16 days.
Jessica Harvey said the object is to establish a baseline so that fisheries managers can gauge changes in populations.
"These fish occupy the same territory of other jacks, snappers, and tuna," she said. "In a world where overfishing continues, if we get to a point where there's no more snappers and jacks for people to eat, they could turn to roosterfish. Guy Harvey Research Institute and Guy Harvey Ocean Foundation are always trying to fill in the knowledge gap, given it's a high-demand recreational fishery and not much is known about it.
"We've generated a lot of interest in learning about these fish. The more people learn about them, the more they care and the more people will be sustainable in their fishing practices."
******
To learn more about the Guy Harvey Ocean Foundation and its research please visit <a href="http://www.GuyHarvey.com/Ocean-Foundation">www.GuyHarvey.com/Ocean-Foundation</a>. https://guyharveyoutpostblog.com/playing-tag-with-roosterfish-for-science/){kind=link}
![](mailto:?subject=FWC Decides Not to Reopen Snook Season on Florida’s West Coast&body=<a href="http://guyharvey.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/499.jpg"><img title=""Side-Liners" by Guy Harvey" src="http://guyharvey.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/499.jpg" alt="" width="450" height="282" /></a>
Catch & release still permitted during closure
NOTE: This story was posted today on <a title="TBO.com" href="http://www2.tbo.com/" target="_blank">TampabayOnline.com</a> by Special Correspondent Frank Sergeant
The Florida Fish & Wildlife Commission ruled this week that the snook fishing season will remain closed on the state's west coast, rather than reopening Sept. 1 as scheduled.
The season has been closed due to a 2010 cold-kill, which wiped out tens of thousands of fish from Clearwater to Naples.
"This is a wise move," said snook guide Scott Moore of Holmes Beach. "I'm seeing big fish and a few slot (keeper-sized) fish, but no little fish — we're missing whole-year classes due to the winter kill, and we need to get more in the pipeline before we start taking them again."
The continued closure also was supported by the Coastal Conservation Association, which said that the number of adult snook on the west coast was down 20 percent after the freeze, and the numbers of juvenile fish killed was probably much greater.
The season will reopen Sept. 1, 2013, if the commission takes no further action.
Catch-and-release fishing for snook is permitted during the closure. https://guyharveyoutpostblog.com/fwc-decides-not-to-reopen-september-1st-snook-season-on-floridas-west-coast/){kind=link}
, the treaty that governs international wildlife trade. Mako sharks had not previously been protected under CITES.
Shortfin makos are captured mainly as bycatch in other offshore fisheries but kept for their high value meat and fins. The biology and migration patterns of this species, also coincidentally the athletics mascot of Nova Southeastern University, is a major topic of study by researchers from the university’s Guy Harvey Research Institute (GHRI). A 2017 collaborative study by the GHRI, the University of Rhode Island and other colleagues highlighted that the fishing mortality rate of shortfin makos in the western North Atlantic was 10 times higher than previously estimated from catches reported by fishermen. The new data suggested that this ocean apex predator is experiencing overfishing, raising serious concerns about whether the current levels of fishery catches in the North Atlantic are sustainable.
<a href="https://guyharveyoutpostblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Makoit.png"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-5412" src="https://guyharveyoutpostblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Makoit.png" alt="" width="1880" height="1494" /></a>
“The CITES listing is a significant step in helping protect these animals,” said Mahmood Shivji, Ph.D., director of the GHRI and professor at Nova Southeastern University’s (NSU) Halmos College of Natural Sciences and Oceanography. “We’ve been studying mako sharks for many years, and have seen first-hand from our tracking studies the excessive exploitation this species is experiencing in the western North Atlantic Ocean.”
Under the just ratified CITES Appendix II listing, mako shark products can’t be traded across international borders unless it can be shown by the exporting country that mako fishing isn’t threaten their chances for survival.
“This increased protection for mako sharks is much needed,” said Greg Jacoski, executive director of the Guy Harvey Ocean Foundation, which helped fund NSU’s GHRI study. “Mako sharks are very important, both ecologically and economically, and their population cannot keep up with the current rate of removal.”
The decline of mako populations is traced to overfishing of young makos, which impacts reproductive rates, and from the natural deaths of mature females over the last 30 years. According to the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas shark species group, the mako population would continue to decline until at least 2035, even it fishing of the species ceased immediately.
The closest relative to the great white shark, makos are the cheetahs of the shark species. As the fastest species of sharks, makos can swim up to 60 mph.
###
About NSU’s Guy Harvey Research Institute: Established in 1999, the Guy Harvey Research Institute (GHRI) is a collaboration between the renowned marine artist, scientist and explorer, Dr. Guy Harvey, and Nova Southeastern University. The mission of NSU’s GHRI is to provide the scientific information necessary to understand, conserve, and effectively manage the world’s marine fishes and their ecosystems. The institute is one of only a handful of private organizations dedicated exclusively to the science-based conservation of marine fish populations and biodiversity. The research, education and outreach activities of NSU’s GHRI are supported by the Guy Harvey Ocean Foundation, AFTCO Inc., extramural research grants, philanthropic donations by private businesses and individuals, and NSU. Please visit http://cnso.nova.edu/ghri for more information.
About the Guy Harvey Ocean Foundation: The Guy Harvey Ocean Foundation (GHOF) conducts scientific research and hosts educational programs aimed at conserving the marine environment. The GHOF also funds affiliated researchers working to better understand our ocean ecosystem and educators helping to foster the next era of marine conservationists. The GHOF will help ensure that future generations can enjoy and benefit from a properly balanced ocean ecosystem. www.GHOF.org https://guyharveyoutpostblog.com/worlds-fastest-shark-nets-international-win/){kind=link}
TRAVEL DESK : 800.513.5257
Connect & Follow