They were fishing for sailfish. Then the bull sharks arrived
The crew of the charter boat Rhonda’s Osprey hooked a sailfish off Palm Beach last week, an exciting moment for their clients, but not an unusual catch this time of year.
Anglers typically release the popular billfish after a good fight on rod and reel and a photo.
But the Osprey crew, captained by Joe Drosey, noticed something ominous lurking as the fish got closer to his 60-foot boat on Feb. 26. At least two large bull sharks homed in on the struggling sailfish, and it was too late to do anything about it.
As first mate Sasha Lickle held the wire leader trying to pull the fish closer to the boat, the sharks devoured it and all she could do was watch.
Drosey said it’s a scene that’s become more common in recent years, and that sharks are now a problem for the charter-fishing industry.
He thinks sharks, like other animals in the wild, have come to associate people with food, and hang around fishing boats hoping for an easy meal in the form of a struggling or wounded fish.
“Sailfish swim 65 mph, so, they can’t catch them on their own,” Drosey said.
More and more species sport fishermen target are falling prey to sharks either as their catches are being reeled in or as soon as they’re released, Drosey and other captains say.
“It’s a huge problem,” Drosey, 59, said Thursday. “Three years ago, I’d say sharks ate 5 to 10 percent of all the fish we caught. Last year, it was about 10 to 15 percent. This year, 25 percent of every one we catch are eaten.”
The sailfish seen in the video was caught about a mile and half off the Palm Beach coast in 90 to 200 feet of water, Drosey said.
According to captains in the area, there are more sharks off the Treasure Coast and South Florida this year, and they say that’s a result of both the 2001 federal ban on longline fishing off the east coast, and also because dive operations are chumming for sharks so their clients can see the apex predators feed in their natural habitat.
Michael Mummert is only 20 years old, but the captain of Reel Inspiration Sportfishing has been either fishing tournaments or taking client anglers off Palm Beach since he was a child. He said one of his go-to places for targeting sailfish and kingfish is Juno Ledge, about a mile off the coast of Jupiter.
But, with the increased shark activity in the area, he said he needs to find new hunting grounds.
“We used to win a tournament there every year. The fish are still there, but if you put a hook on a fish, the sharks are on it right away,” Mummert said. “You put a line in the water hoping for a kingfish and you end up with a bull shark.”
Mummert fished there earlier this week and said he caught six sailfish.
“I didn’t get one of them to the boat,” he said.
Charter anglers acknowledge that conservation efforts like the longlining ban were needed to help endangered shark populations rebound. But their frustration grows daily as they say shark numbers have increased in recent years to the point where they wait in packs under boats, making it more difficult for fishermen to ply their trade.
“They’re thinking they’re going to get a meal there, so why would they leave?” Mummert said.
Chris Namacher, Mummert’s business partner, said he’s talked with many “old timers” who said sharks used to fear the sound of a boat’s engine because fishermen used to kill them either as food or because they were considered a nuisance species.
Good or bad, Namacher said sharks offshore are no longer afraid of people.
“Now, when they hear the sound of the engine, it’s like you’re ringing the dinner bell,” he said.
Sport fishermen said this has as much to do with dive operators chumming for sharks as it does reeling in and releasing fish, a theory with which those in the scuba industry don’t wholly disagree.
Matthew Willy, general manager of Shark Addicts Diving Florida, said he and other dive operators hoping to attract sharks put a standard crate of chum in the water, otherwise he said the fish would stay away. He said the presence of chum — churned-up fish parts — is also the reason sharks hang around the charter boats.
“Without it, you’re floating in an empty tank of water,” Willy said. “That kind of debunks the theory that they’re attracted to the sound of a boat.”
Willy also said there are only a handful of shark-diving boats off the Treasure Coast, compared to hundreds of fishing boats.
“We don’t say it’s not our fault, but from our experience, the sharks are doing what they’re designed to do: eating wounded, dying or dead fish,” he said. “It’s easy to blame the guy with the big shark painted on the side of the boat.”
Bryce Rohrer, owner of Florida Shark Diving, which takes clients shark diving from the Keys to Jupiter, disagreed with the fishing captains theory that the shark population has increased significantly. The areas where the sharks have been eating a lot of anglers’ fish have been shark-heavy spots for a long time. But, Rohrer said the same does not hold true in areas just an hour to the north and south.
“A lot of these areas don’t have any sharks,” Rohrer said. “For this one spot with tons of sharks, there are 10,000 others with none.”
Drosey said after posting the video on his Instagram account, several people accused him of deliberately letting the sharks attack the sailfish, which he vehemently denies.
“I’m allowed to keep one sailfish per person a day, but I don’t. Even if someone on my boat wants to eat one, I release them. We release them all,” he said.
But he said the video allows the public to see what he said he and other sport fish anglers have been dealing with for the past several years.
“As soon as the sharks saw the sailfish, they devoured it in 30 seconds,” Drosey said. “I finally got the perfect video.”
This story was originally published March 5, 2020 at 6:41 PM.
