No Chumming For Sharks Near Beach

May 3, 2008

Release from: Press-Register (Alabama)

Aiming to protect beachgoers, state regulators say they expect by the middle of this month to enact a ban on chumming for sharks and other within 300 feet of the beach.

The law, which was drafted by the Alabama Department of Conservation and Natural resources with input from Orange Beach officials, generally prohibits anyone from targeting sharks by chumming or bloodbaiting, whether it's with fish parts or synthetic attractant.

Doing so would be a misdemeanor game violation that could carry a fine of up to $500, said Conservation Department Commissioner Barnett Lawley.

"Unfortunately you have certain people at times that like to go shark fishing off the shore and they're chumming with people swimming all around them," said Orange Beach Mayor Pete Blalock.

Lawley said that he planned to bring the proposal to the Conserva tion Department's May 17 board meeting for consideration but would pass an emergency ban sooner if asked to do so by the city or his Marine Division officers stationed at the beach. Lawley said this week that he fully supports the measure.

"There'll be no problem there," he said. "This is common sense."

The Orange Beach City Council is slated to consider a resolution at its Tuesday meeting urging Lawley to immediately enact the ban.

Lawley said that in 2004, when Conservation Department officials reported seeing as many 120 sharks at once off popular swimming beaches some 20 times more than the typical half-dozen that are spotted during their flyovers his department discovered that some shrimp boats were dumping their by-catch too close to shore, which was attracting the predators.

At the time, changes were made to the rules dictating where shrimpers can dump the fish they didn't mean to catch, Lawley said. Now, Lawley said, regulators want to make sure that surf fishermen, those fishing from piers and those targeting sharks while anchored just outside the second sand bar off the beach don't draw sharks to shore.

A ban on chumming would almost certainly apply to the new 1,520-foot Gulf State Park pier, Lawley said.

He said he believes chumming was prohibited on the old Gulf State Park Pier because it would interfere with how other people were fishing.

"We can always make common-sense adjustments on the new pier when we have to, but I can't see where chumming would be allowed," Lawley said.

Hayden Olds, is one of a group of fishermen who target tarpon cruising along the Gulf beach beginning in June. Olds said the restriction would not affect most fishermen fishing for tarpon along the beach because they don't use chum, but others do.

"It won't affect most of us because we're using live baits under balloons in 18 to 30 feet of water, which is from 100 to 200 yards off the beach," he said. "There are some guys who do use chum, but they're usually anchored outside of the second bar and they could always move just a little farther out to comply."

Olds said he has used chum in the past, but stopped because it attracts too many other species that he isn't interested in catching.

"I can tell you, there are some big sharks out there," Olds said. "We see them all the time without any chum in the water and one will take one of our baits every once in a while. There are blacktips and the occasional hammerhead, but most of the bigger ones are bull sharks."

John Thomas Jenkins, a major with the Conservation Department's Marine Resources Division said that two years ago, the Conservation Department started getting complaints from vacationers about people shark fishing from the beach along Fort Morgan. Vacationers, who wanted to swi, were wary of people renting adjacent houses and tossing chicken parts into the surf to attract sharks, Jenkins said.

Orange Beach officials also have fielded complaints about people chumming at public beaches, said the city's Coastal Resources Manager Phillip West. In one instance, West, while investigating a reported fish kill, ran across a man trying to land a 6-foot bull shark from the pier behind the Four Seasons condo tower.

Though he could tell the man that what he was doing wasn't very smart, West said he couldn't tell him it was illegal. Eventually the shark broke the line, so the debate was moot.

But, West said, the city has since sought to give its warnings some teeth.

A few coastal states have laws that regulate the size and type of tackle allowed when fishing from the beach, but, West said, the Conservation Department's legal advisers decided that because there were too many variables, it was best to simply ban chumming and to include a clause that gives enforcement personnel the right to prevent any surfside fishing practices deemed unsafe.

"It's not a heavy hand to keep people from fishing we want more people fishing," West said. "But there are times when it's not appropriate to throw a bunch of bloody bait around people swimming."