Yesterday, I spent a couple of hours at the Pacifica Pier, hoping to catch some Dungeness crab. The Dungeness season opened Saturday, so the pier was a lot busier than I'd seen in my two previous trips. A little rowdier, too, with fairly robust defiance of city ordinances that forbid such favored activities of the pier fishermen as overhead casting, drinking, and smoking.
I didn't see anyone catch a Dungeness, but there were rock crabs to be had. I picked up a couple of undersized ones in my hoop net, which I baited with squid.
The guys who were using the snare traps you can cast had better results--probably because they could cover so much more territory. Whatever the reason, they caught more and bigger crabs than hoop net yokels like me.
They also made some strange catches.
The smiling fellow at the left caused a big commotion at the end of the pier after he somehow managed to lasso this sand shark with his snare. Another crabber took down a seagull in flight while casting his.The seagull was okay after the two dudes in the picture below untangled the line from the bird's wings. (As always, you can click on the picture to enlarge for a better view). They were very competent fellows, treated the bird with delicacy. I admired that, since it's easy for a pier fisherman to view the gulls as nothing but nuisance. They steal bait, make a racket, and shit like fiends. Still, the dudes were gentle with the bird.
The shark was less fortunate. It was half strangled and bleeding as a consequence of the snare around its neck. After the guy removed the snare (with a foot placed indelicately on the shark's throat), he stuffed it in a bag.
Looking at that shark in the bag--its tail sticking lifelessly from one end--I felt bad. I felt worse after I got home and Jen and I watched the movie Sharkwater, which documents how China, with its new affluence and old taste for shark fin soup, is causing a worldwide collapse in shark populations. Appalling on many levels.
2 comments:
Shark, in my limited experience with it, makes a tasty dish. I believe its sale is now illegal in Minnesota, though the ban -- if I am correct -- has more to do with elevated levels of methyl mercury than with any concern about shark finning, which at any rate is a truly reprehensible practice. Think "elephant tusking" . . .
I don't doubt that shark meat is tasty.
But that movie I mentioned, Sharkwaters, makes such a strong case that shark populations are collapsing worldwide, it's hard to feel good about anyone taking shark for any reason.
The main cause of the collapse is long line fishing--a practice which also produces huge by-kills of turtles and other marine life. Most of the sharks are taken strictly for their fins, a prestige item in China which is the reach of more and more people.
The spectacle is brutal. Sharks are hoisted on to the deck of the boat and de-finned by dudes with machetes. The rest of the shark is then thrown back into the ocean to die.
Because sharks have been so thoroughly vilified in the popular culture--Jaws, Open Water, the tidal wave of bogus "summer of the shark" news stories from a few years back--they don't arouse public sympathy in the way of of dolphins and whales.
Sharkwaters also makes a persuasive case that the collapse of shark populations will probably screw up the ocean eco-system in severe ways.
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