Video: Underwater Fishing and Tagging of Goliath Grouper

[guyharrisonphoto]

Hi DD, I am talking about spearing sharks for trophies or in tournaments. I dislike rod and reel shark killing just as intensely so no singling out of the spear community on that and in fact the "sport" fishing community is likely far worse. Don't want to paint the spear community with too broad a brush as most spearos I ever dove with are like you (and me for that matter), but, I have seen pics on line of spearfishermen showing off their killed sharks (maybe from places other than here, that is true).

 

[Scott L]

Yes, I elect DD as Sportsman of the year.

 

[guyharrisonphoto]

In my younger days, when I speared, I was a free-diver and hawaiian sling only. I did like the challenge and the skill involved, having to dive, pick the fish, shoot (very carefully and more often than not not shooting at all), retrieve and surface on one breath. I did have a few pics taken from time to time. I have never actually owned or even used a spear "gun" so don't know if it as easy as it sounds. Anyway, now I take my pics of the live fish. The thrill of getting next an 800 pound fish that tolerates your presence is amazing, and the experience has a whole different meaning.

 

[MMM]

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[RickyF]

Nice video D/D! Scientist gather a lot of good information from the tagging studies to futher help the species.

 

[danvolker]

Nice video D/D! Scientist gather a lot of good information from the tagging studies to futher help the species.

i would just hope that those engaged in the tagging studies, are NOT doing it in the hopes of creating an argument for being able to kill a percentage of the species in question...In other words, NOT helping the species.
Right now, the species in question is safe from being killed by spearfisherman.

Most divers in Palm Beach would like the moratorium against killing Goliaths to be permanent.

In the 60's and 70's, the goliaths were essentially wiped out by spearfisherman looking for trophies, or that were on a "mission" to rid the Palm Beach area of the "menace" of the Jewfish. The fisherman hated them, the commercial lobster guys hated them, and they were easy kills for the big game hunters of the day.

 

[dumpsterDiver]

i would just hope that those engaged in the tagging studies, are NOT doing it in the hopes of creating an argument for being able to kill a percentage of the species in question...In other words, NOT helping the species.
Right now, the species in question is safe from being killed by spearfisherman.

Most divers in Palm Beach would like the moratorium against killing Goliaths to be permanent.

In the 60's and 70's, the goliaths were essentially wiped out by spearfisherman looking for trophies, or that were on a "mission" to rid the Palm Beach area of the "menace" of the Jewfish. The fisherman hated them, the commercial lobster guys hated them, and they were easy kills for the big game hunters of the day.

Now Dan... the moderator deleted a sheet load of your off topic and antagonistic posts on this thread. Now when it is all wiped clean, you come back once more and question my motivation for volunteer work.

What is your problem?

 

[danvolker]

This is Frank Hammett...the original diver in Palm Beach that found most of our reefs, and one of the most prolific spearfisherman of the 50's through the 90's. I spearfished with Frank from the late 70's to the late 90's. He had so many stories about how the ocean used to be....and about how the Jewfish used to blanket the bottom even up to the Blue Heron Bridge. In the late 90's, he was regretting all the killing he did of Jewfish, but when he weas doing the bulk of this killing in the 60's and 70's, and 80's, the "scientists" from the South Atlantic Fisheries were still saying the Jewfish were part of an inexhaustible supply of fish.
[video=youtube_share;ypf_ei9X0eI]http://youtu.be/ypf_ei9X0eI[/video]

 

[dumpsterDiver]

This is Frank Hammett...the original diver in Palm Beach that found most of our reefs, and one of the most prolific spearfisherman of the 50's through the 90's. I spearfished with Frank from the late 70's to the late 90's. He had so many stories about how the ocean used to be....and about how the Jewfish used to blanket the bottom even up to the Blue Heron Bridge. In the late 90's, he was regretting all the killing he did of Jewfish, but when he weas doing the bulk of this killing in the 60's and 70's, and 80's, the "scientists" from the South Atlantic Fisheries were still saying the Jewfish were part of an inexhaustible supply of fish.
[video=youtube_share;ypf_ei9X0eI]http://youtu.be/ypf_ei9X0eI[/video]

So what is the purpose in posting that video here Dan? Is it to demonstrate that the local area can sustain harvest of many hundreds or thousands of jewfish over a period of decades without any significant reduction in abundance?

 

[danvolker]

I would have thought the clear message, was that the "natural" numbers of these fish is a thousand times higher than what we have now, so technically, if we want to rebuild the species, it needs to get exponentially larger in population size than it is now, prior to opening any season on them....
Also, it makes the claims about the jewfish as being destructive to target species of fish seem foolish, as if we had thousands as Frank discussed, they must not have been eating all the snapper and other game fish--because they were hugely abundant back then also.