Sawfish Resurface
June 30, 2004
Release from: Sarah Greenhalgh
News-Press.com (Southwest Florida)
Two sightings last week of the endangered smalltooth sawfish have Florida marine researchers celebrating.
A Cape Coral man landed a young sawfish in a canal Saturday and two young teens brought a seven-footer to shore Thursday near the Midpoint Memorial Bridge in Fort Myers.
Both fish were released unharmed.
“This is great news,” Mote Marine Laboratory staff biologist Tonya Wiley said. “The last time we had some sightings in Lee County was around Fourth of July last year.”
Wiley says the rare fish, especially juveniles, prefer shallow, warm water. Sawfish are typically born between late spring and early summer with the females giving birth to about 10 fingerlings.
“It’s very curious,” Wiley said. “They seem to like the concrete canal systems near the Cape Coral Yacht Club. We have had several sightings, but the animals are usually no more than 3 feet long.”
Wiley says when the fish are born they are approximately 2 feet in length and at that age are easy prey to bull sharks.
“They need to hide,” Wiley said. “That’s why places like the canals and the Everglades are such a wonderful environment for them.”
Mote Marine set up a hot line in 2000 to record sawfish sightings. Since then, more than 400 of the fish have been sighted in Florida.
George Burgess, director of the Florida Program for Shark Research at Florida’s Museum of Natural History in Gainesville, said there are probably about 2,000 smalltooth sawfish left in the wild, primarily in Southwest Florida, the Everglades and the Florida Keys.
“This is a critter that is definitely on the decline,” Burgess said. “Gill net fishing (and) trophy fishing have reduced their numbers drastically. We only started looking into this species about 10 years ago. It will take probably 20 to 30 years before we will see some sort of big recovery.”
SPECIAL CATCHES
Up until Saturday night, the fishing had been pretty poor this summer for Bob and Anna Bregenzer.
Around 9:30 p.m., the Cape Coral residents went out to their dock for a little evening angling when they hooked the baby sawfish in Victoria Canal.
“Yeah just before I got the sawfish, I landed someone’s old radio,” Bob Bregenzer said. “We have not caught hardly anything of late.”
“I didn’t know what I had. All I knew it was big,” he said of the 21?2-foot-long fish. “I am glad I was actually holding the rod in my hand.”
Caught on 30-pound test with dead shrimp, he tried to keep the sawfish from going under his boat. With Anna Bregenzer’s help, Bob Bregenzer netted the young fish and landed it on the deck.
Bregenzer called neighbor Weldon Dobson to come have a look.
“Weldon was really excited and got video of it,” Bregenzer said.
Dobson also got a little more than he bargained for when the group tried to release the fish.
“The fish thrashed about and got Weldon but good in the hand with his saw,” Bregenzer said. “It shot off like a bat out-of-you-know-what when we put it back in the water.”
Josh Senseman, 15, and his friend, Casey Schneider, 15, of Fort Myers, said it took 20 minutes to land the 7-foot sawfish around 7 p.m. Thursday on a seawall just south of the Midpoint bridge.
The Cypress Lake High School students had been fishing for tarpon with herring and 80-pound test when Senseman hooked the sawfish.
“It had to be close to 7 feet and about 150 pounds,” Senseman said. “I am only 5-foot-10. I have never caught anything that big in my life. ”
