Marine Service Fishing For Input On Plan To Save Sawfish

September 9, 2006

Release from: Eric Staats
Naples News

Pity the endangered smalltooth sawfish, swimming anonymously around Southwest Florida except for the occasional accidental snaring by a fisherman's net or hook.

They are not furry or huggable. They don't have their own Florida license plate like the endangered panther or manatee.

But a plan to restore the smalltooth sawfish population is raising hopes among researchers that the first marine fish to land a spot on the federal endangered species list will finally find a soft spot in the public's consciousness.

"It's these chance encounters with the public that are the most crucial (to sawfish recovery)," said Colin Simpfendorfer, a sawfish researcher at Mote Marine Laboratory in Sarasota.

Southwest Florida is the last stronghold of the odd-looking creature, which shares a branch of the animal kingdom tree with sharks and rays. Smalltooth sawfish once ranged from New Jersey to Central America. Some experts guess there might be 2,000 smalltooth sawfish left.

Habitat degradation and gill-netting are blamed for their decline. The Ocean Conservancy petitioned the National Marine Fisheries Service to list the fish as endangered in 1999. It was listed in 2003.

The National Marine Fisheries Service is taking public comment on a plan to boost populations of the smalltooth sawfish, which was added to the federal endangered species list in 2003. The largest numbers of smalltooth sawfish left in the United States live in Southwest Florida and the Florida Keys. The NMFS plan focuses on public education and research.

Until Oct. 23, NMFS is taking public comment on a recovery plan that focuses on public education, protecting, research and habitat restoration.

The plan estimates it could be 100 years before the smalltooth sawfish can be taken off the endangered species list.

"This (the recovery plan) is a really important step on the way," said Sonja Fordham, director of the shark conservation program at The Ocean Conservancy.

Simpfendorfer said work already has been done to help the sawfish, starting with Florida's ban on gillnets in 1994. It has been illegal to possess a sawfish in Florida since 1992.

The biggest hurdles to sawfish recovery rest with the sawfish itself. They grow slowly, taking 10 years to mature. They produce 15 to 20 pups at a time. And then there's that pesky saw.

Sawfish use it to stir up the bottom to find food or to stun or injure fish before making a meal out of them. But the saw also makes it easy to get tangled in nets.

Simpfendorfer said the key to untangling a sawfish is patience. The fish should be kept in the water as much as possible and the net cut off. If a fishermen hooks a sawfish, the line should be cut as close as possible to the hook and the fish released, he said.

NMFS is working on educational videos to show to commercial fishermen, brochures to distribute to recreational anglers and signs to post at busy boat ramps, Simpfendorfer said.

The fish is of little commercial value as food, but collectors are thought to pay more than $1,000 per foot for a sawfish. Trophy hunters also can't resist cutting off the saw for a souvenir. In January, eBay banned the sale of smalltooth sawfish parts at the online auction site

"If we can let people know how important it is to get this animal back into the water safely, I think we can go a long way to recover the species," Simpfendorfer said.

Finding out more about where sawfish spend their time also is key to protecting them, said John Carlson, a research biologist with NMFS in Panama City.

"The smalltooth sawfish has kind of been under the radar screen for quite a while and we really don't know much about these animals at all," he said.

Mote research on the Caloosahatchee River, for example, has shown that smalltooth sawfish like moderate salinities that can be upset by too much freshwater being emptied from Lake Okeechobee, Simpfendorfer said.

Tagging studies have found that juvenile sawfish find refuge in mangrove roots and are highly loyal to the same shallow mud flats for days, or longer, at a time, Simpfendorfer said.

Everglades National Park is an important piece of the sawfish recovery puzzle. Preliminary analysis shows that sawfish abundance increased by about 3 percent to 6 percent per year between 1989 and 2002.

Further strides will require a long-term commitment and enough public support to move Congress to fund the recovery plan, Fordham, at The Ocean Conservancy, said.

"Sawfish don't really have a champion," she said. "They don't have the congressional appropriations that other cuddly species get."