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Why fish for great white sharks? The question spurred Alastair Bland to write this week’s feature, “Grey Laws on White Sharks.” He explains:
While fishing for salmon from a kayak one day in 2017, I watched another kayak angler hook a fish so big that it towed him away. He disappeared into the distance on a slow-motion, Nantucket-style sleigh ride, but he maintained radio communication with me and a few other anglers. About three hours later and from six kilometers away, he reported to us that he had brought the fish to the surface and, as close as he could to the hook, cut the line. The fish, he said, was a great white shark almost four meters long.
None of the rest of us envied him or wished they had hooked that shark instead. This seemed remarkable to me at the time—that in a group of a dozen salmon anglers, nobody was interested in tangling with a great white.
My perspective, as an angler, on sharks is part of what drew me to this story of fishers catching great whites in Southern California. For several years, occasional reports had come my way of recreational anglers hooking and reeling in young great whites, which are legally protected in California. A few of these reports were accompanied by photos, generally showing stoked anglers and sharks that had seen better days—sometimes bloodied, and in at least one set of photos, stone dead.
Writing the story became a three-month desktop research project focused on the legal interpretation of a poorly written law. It reminded me that, among anglers, there are very different personal reasons for putting baited hooks into the water. For many, fishing is about time spent on the water and, hopefully, bringing home a few fish to eat. For others, fishing is a sport of trophies, adrenaline, bragging rights, big fish photos, and social media approval, and for these people, nothing beats a shark. Indeed, one source I interviewed called the great white “the holy grail” of fishing. Funny. I’d rather catch anchovies. |
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