Sawed Off

June 19, 2006

Release from: Timothy O'Hara
Florida Keys News

Aztecs worshipped them for embodying the spirit of a goddess. Fishermen poached them to near-nonexistence and sold them as trophies.

The jagged-edged snout of a smalltooth sawfish was so prized in the last century that fishermen lopped off hundreds of the bills and tossed their bodies aside.

In 2004, eBay opened bidding at $1,240 for a sawfish snout, despite federal protections in place since they were classified "endangered" in 2003.

Scientists are trying to figure out how to help the prehistoric sea creatures rebound to historic number, to a time when they were found in waters from Texas around to North Carolina. Today, the estimated 2,000 Pritis pectinata of the ray family swim primarily off the Florida Keys, the Everglades and 10,000 Islands south of Naples.

Next month, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration will release a plan for the sawfish's recovery, said Shelley Norton, a natural resource specialist with the agency.

Little is known about where the elusive sea creatures feed and mate. They reach sexual maturity slowly, taking 10 years to have offspring, and many have been killed before giving birth to live litters. They have litters every other year.

Scientists speculate that sawfish deliver pups in mangroves or tree islands, and that young sawfish remain there to hide from predators like bull and lemon sharks.

"There's still a lot we need to learn about sawfish," said Tonya Wiley, a sawfish conservation biologist with Mote Marine Laboratory in Sarasota. "So far, what we have found is that 'natural' areas — places without seawalls or a lot of coastal development — are important sawfish nursery areas."

The species can be traced back 100 million years and are considered prehistoric because they didn't change much through evolution, Wiley said. Sharks can be traced back 200 million years, while there is evidence the first stingrays appeared 60 million years ago, she said.

Sawfish bills, or rostrums, were believed to hold the spirit of the Aztec's Earth goddess Cipactli and were used in their rituals 500 years ago. In 1979, archeologists found several sawfish rostrums underneath the Aztec Great Temple in Mexico City, according to the Florida Museum of Natural History.

More recently, years of slaughter coupled with the loss of habitat by way of coastal development have nearly wiped out the entire species in the United States.

Though one fisherman reported catching as many as 300 in a mullet season decades ago in the Indian River Lagoon, the current sawfish population is estimated to be about 5 percent of historical numbers.

Mote Marine Laboratory launched a sawfish tagging program in 1999 to study their movement patterns, habitat use and behavior. Mote's Center for Shark Research has collected more than 730 sighting reports.

Mote scientists used that data to help the Ocean Conservancy petition federal officials to get the smalltooth sawfish listed as an endangered species in 2003.

Despite federal protections, people were paying up to $1,240 for the snout on the online auction site eBay in 2004, when as many as 20 snouts a month were being sold on the Web site. The continued sale of sawfish rostrums on eBay led Mote Marine Laboratory, the Ocean Conservancy and independent sawfish researcher Matt McDavitt to partner on a project to have the Internet-based auction company cease its practice of allowing the rostrums to be sold.

McDavitt contacted eBay's legal department in 2004 to alert them to the sea creature's protected status, which makes the sale of sawfish parts illegal. Sonja Forham, shark conservation specialist with the Ocean Conservancy, followed up with a letter to eBay CEO Meg Whitman in August 2005, asking that the company stop the sale of sawfish parts.

The company agreed this year to stop allowing eBay subscribers to sell the smalltooth sawfish parts on the Internet auction site. The company still allows the sale of other species of sawfish that are not federally protected.

The Web site now has as many as five sawfish parts for sale at a time. On Friday there was one item, currently priced at $637.46, on eBay, Wiley said. The company also is requiring a statement be placed on each sale page of any rostrum about the possible protective status.

"Right now I think it is more about changing the mind set and using it as a tool to raise public awareness," Wiley said. "But as the population recovers and there are more sawfish out there and people encounter them more, it could prove very valuable because it eliminates one of the threats to the population and an incentive to kill them or remove the saw.

"I think if someone was trying to sell illegal saws, and eBay is now not an avenue for them to do so, it would stop them from poaching the saws. So, it is definitely helping. I think as time progresses it will help even more."

The spiky points on the sawfish make them vulnerable to being captured, even inadvertently.

"They still get caught in people's cast nets," said Wiley, who has caught, tagged and released 82 sawfish.

Poaching is still a problem, Wiley said. Mote has had several reports from law enforcement agencies about commercial trawlers being caught with a sawfish carcass on board. Mote also receive about a half-dozen reports of recreational fishermen being caught with a sawfish, which usually happens when someone catches one and doesn't know what it is, she said.

One law enforcement officer in Chokoloskee caught a local fisherman filleting a sawfish on the tailgate of his truck about a year ago. And a bait shop in the Keys called Wiley about a month ago to tell her that a tourist who had been out fishing brought a 3-foot sawfish to him to find out what it was. The tourist was promptly told that the sawfish was an endangered species and to get it out of the shop, she said.

An occasional sawfish has been spotted as far north as the Florida Panhandle and Georgia, and as far south as Cuba.

"By getting sightings from the general public, and then tagging animals, we hope to be able to answer some of these questions that are crucial to the species' survival," Wiley said.