New Rules Would Include Shark Size Limits

June 10, 2009

Release from: Jim Waymer
Florida Today

"Jaws" would still be a keeper.

But Florida fisherman this year could face a suite of new shark fishing rules that include a first-ever size limit on sharks they catch in state waters.

The 4½ -foot minimum size limit would affect just about all the shark species fishermen can catch and keep, except certain more plentiful sharks.

The state has yet to make a specific proposal.

First, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission will have five workshops this month to take public comment about how it ought to manage sharks, including one on June 22 at the Brevard Agricultural Center in Cocoa.

New rules in state waters also could include stricter shark bag limits, gear restrictions and changes to the prohibited shark species list and shark landing requirements.

Florida waters extend three miles in the Atlantic and nine miles in the Gulf of Mexico.

The state rules are needed to comply with an interstate shark management plan approved late last year by the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, which manages fishing in coastal waters in 15 states from Maine to Florida.

"This is just reviewing the plan and getting some ideas from the public," Lee Schlesinger, a spokesman with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, said, referring to this month's workshops.

"We've never established a size limit for sharks in Florida. That's already in place in federal waters," he said.

The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission plan seeks to protect pregnant female sharks when they congregate in coastal estuaries and other near-shore waters to give birth.

Their plan addresses management of 40 shark species and creates new rules for sport and commercial shark fishing in state and federal waters.

The plan spawned from concerns about the status of the spiny dogfish, then, in 2005, expanded to other coastal sharks.

Under the plan, the size limit for harvesting sharks excludes Atlantic sharpnose, blacknose, finetooth, bonnethead and smooth dogfish.

Florida regulators have yet to specify which sharks in state waters, if any, would be exempted.

"The take-home message is that we need to comply with the general requirements of the plan. We do have some flexibility," Schlesinger said.

A final hearing for any new Florida shark rules could come as soon as December, Schlesinger said.

Florida's shark rules already are pretty close to what the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission is trying to do, Schlesinger said.

In 1992, Florida limited all sport and commercial vessels to one shark per person per day in state waters, up to two sharks per boat per trip.

And shark finning -- in which the shark is caught and the fins cut off for shark-fin soup -- also has been illegal since the early-1990s.

Schlesinger doesn't expect much resistance to new shark rules, because there isn't much commercial shark fishing in Florida.

"I just don't sense there's going to be a lot of push back on this. We don't have much of a fishery anyway," he said.

Bob Jones, director of the Southeastern Fisheries Association, which represents about 300 commercial fishermen, agrees.

"They've been mashed right down to almost nonexistence," Jones said.

Capt. Tom Adams, owner of the Miss Cape Canaveral, a recreational charter-fishing boat based out of Port Canaveral, hadn't heard about the pending shark rules, but isn't too worried about the prospect of a minimum size limit.

"Wouldn't bother me at all," he said.

He says his customers seem to catch as many sharks as they did three decades ago.

"Every kind you can name," he said. "It's about the same as it's always been."