Sawfish Haul Unusual Feat

June 4, 2004

Release from: Bill Sargent
Florida Today

When Marc Burdett and nine friends went shark fishing at Melbourne Beach on Thursday, who would have thought they'd catch something as rare and endangered as a 12-foot-long smalltooth sawfish?

"I thought it was just another shark," said Burdett, a Melbourne paramedic and avid shark fisherman and surfer. "There was nothing spectacular about it until we got it to the beach and saw what it was and how big it was."

It took three of Burdett's friends -- Shawn Chapman, Pete Cavazos and Jarred Parrish -- to wade into the surf and pull the estimated 150-pound fish onto the sand. That brought onlookers streaming out of beachside motels for the sight of a lifetime.

After several quick pictures, the same three pulled the gray-colored fish with the saw-like bill back into the water where it was revived and it swam away.

With only an estimated 3,000 to 4,000 of the unusual fish left in Florida waters, and most of them in Everglades National Park and the Ten Thousand Islands of south Florida, the smalltooth sawfish was placed on the Endangered Species List last April. It has been protected in Florida waters since 1992.

Tonya Wiley, a staff biologist with the Mote Marine Lab at Sarasota which requests sightings of sawfish, said a mature 12-foot sawfish in waters off Florida's East Coast is rare.

"It's very, very rare. We get a report of one maybe every couple of years," Wiley said.

Sawfish, which are grouped in the family with sharks and rays, were common in the Indian River in the late 1800s and early 1900s. But over fishing and loss of their preferred habitat brought an end of them. They use the "saw" to kill prey and as a defensive weapon.

Burdett fought the sawfish for 45 minutes on a 6-O Penn Senator reel spooled with 50-pound mono and 100-pound wire leader. Pieces of jack crevalle and sheepshead were used for bait.

"I knew they're endangered because I've seen the notices in tackle shops," Burdett said. "We wanted to get it back in the water. It felt good to see it take off."