Fishing for Sharks

Sympathy for the Devils by Mike Marks

Mankind shares the elemental instinct of survival with every plant, animal and insect on Earth. Lose this instinct and sooner or later you'll be culled from the herd. And so it goes that most people who visit the beach have an innate fear of sharks. In 1975, Steven Spielberg brilliantly exploited that fear in the ultimate shark tale, Jaws. Anyone who sees the movie is guaranteed to think twice about swimming at the beach for a long, long time.

But Jaws is much more than a film about human sashimi. It's a classic sea monster story in the spirit of Moby Dick. Quint, captain of the Orca, is a modern day Ahab obsessed with slaying the savage great white shark. He and his crew are heroic. They pursue a predator that isn't only a maneater, but can also chew a 35-foot fishing vessel to pieces. This shark is a worthy foe and honor is due to those who fight him. In the end, it takes a full arsenal of weapons and pure luck just to slay the beast.

It's hard to have compassion for any animal that will eat you given hunger and opportunity. The killing machine in Jaws lacks any redeemable qualities to elicit sympathy for him. He closely resembles one of those bad guys in a Dirty Harry movie. You feel vindicated when he's finally killed.

The Oak Bluffs Monster Shark Tournament casts itself in the same spirit as Jaws. The competing fishermen are heroes and the sharks are villains. At the weigh-in, under a warm summer sky, there's a party atmosphere as spectators watch and gawk while dead sharks are strung up by their tails like villains in a hangman's noose - justice is being served and the seas are now safer because of the brave fishermen…hooray!

But the weigh-in has another feeling as well, one less like true justice and more like a lynch mob. These sharks haven't really hurt anyone. This year's tournament winner was a 17' 482 lb. thresher shark. Threshers eat tuna, not people. They're beautiful animals with long feathery tails. Their teeth are more like nubs than knives. Minutes after the tournament ends, too late for contest consideration, another dead shark is hauled up. This one is apregnant female. The audience is spared the disturbing sight of living baby sharks being cut out of her belly.

Shark tournaments differ from other fishing contests. Whereas predatory shark populations have declined by 90% in the past fifty years, populations of striped bass and bluefish have risen because of successful fishery management and higher reproduction rates. Sharks procreate slowly. For example, female Porbeagle sharks (often caught at the Vineyard tournament) don't reproduce until around age 13 and give birth to maybe four pups per year. Similarly, other sharks don't reach sexual maturity until their teens and give birth to just a few young every year. Any reduction in shark numbers has a much greater impact on shark populations than other fish.

Like many surfers, I enjoy eating all kinds of seafood, but specifically avoid consuming shark meat for reasons of personal karma. Thus, anything I write on behalf of sharks might be tainted by my desire to contribute towards this karma. That said, it seems to me the Monster Shark Tournament feeds unfortunate stereotypes about these very cool creatures. If things continue like this, sharks could well become extinct. Beyond the greater loss to science and the environment, I'd also feel a personal loss if they were gone. I like my wilderness to be wild.

Top