Sharks on the line: Part 2 - Tight lines
March 21, 2025 at 2:00 AM EDT
As the recreational fishery chips away at shark populations outside the boundaries of scientists’ data books — and as a new constitutional amendment loosens restrictions on anglers across the state — Florida faces an uncertain future for sustainable shark management. In Part II of this three-part series, The Marjorie embeds with recreational and commercial fishermen to parse through the industries’ varied interactions with and attitudes toward sharks.
This story was funded by the Schooner Foundation as well as readers like you.
Capt. Denny Voyles isn’t one to brag, but he is the go-to guy for shark fishing in Cedar Key.
The Florida town of less than 1,000 residents is nestled in a small crevice of the Gulf Coast. On either side of the two-way road into town, roseate spoonbills forage in the marshes, and pods of dolphins frolic in view of oceanfront restaurants.
When tourists fly down from the Midwest looking for some rod action, they call Voyles. “I’ve got a lot of people who are absolutely hooked,” he says, ignoring the pun. “They’re just addicted to shark fishing.”
That’s why I called him, too.
Capt. Denny Voyles is well known as a recreational shark fishing guide in Cedar Key, Florida. (854x526, AR: 1.623574144486692)
Cedar Key is known better for clamming than shark fishing, but Voyles has found success in the latter for the past two decades. Summertime is peak season for sharks: when television popularizes the predators during shark-themed programming like Shark Week, and when the Gulf of Mexico’s warm waters are most welcoming.
We head out on the Gulf on a warm Monday morning. When the smoke from the Crystal River power plant is drifting straight up, “that means it’s calm,” Voyles says. On a four-hour trip, it isn’t uncommon for him to catch 12 to 15 sharks, typically ranging from 2 to 8 feet in length.
“Some of the [fishing] guides just don’t like sitting here and waiting,” he says as we wait for a bite. “But when you hook one, it’s pretty exciting.”
At this first fishing spot a few miles offshore, Voyles anchors the boat, throws a mesh bag of frozen chum over the side, and then saws into a frozen ladyfish. He strings a large chunk of this “shark sushi” to the hook, leaded with a thick wire so the sharks can’t bite through it.
He lobs the heavy bait into the water with a ker-plunk! After stationing the rod in a holder, Voyles gives me instructions: “When the rods take off, when he bumps you hard, you set that up and start reeling.”
Capt. Denny Voyles drops a hunk of ladyfish into Gulf waters during a shark fishing trip. (800x177, AR: 4.519774011299435)
The breeze cuts out, leaving us to drip in sweat as we wait for the first bite.
Suddenly, the bobber disappears beneath the surface, and the fishing line whirs, bvvvvvvvvzzzzzzzzz!
“There we go, there we go!” Voyles says as I jump on the rod. It doesn’t take long for my muscles to start burning. Whatever was on the end of the line felt like a fast-moving 200 pounds.
After a long fight, we haul up a juvenile scalloped hammerhead, a protected species, and release it back into the water. The hammerhead swims in circles a couple times before disappearing into the depths.
I recalled conversations with scientists about hammerheads being especially vulnerable to what’s called post-catch mortality. High stress — like from fighting a line — produces excess lactic acid, which can kill them.
Voyles tells me he catches hammerheads from time to time but “they’re kinda rare.”
Voyles is somewhat of a rarity himself. The 69-year-old is also a retired teacher of 38 years, leading high school and middle school math, agriculture, chemistry, and history classes. He took pride and responsibility in the profession, just as he does with fishing.
Capt. Denny Voyles pulls up a juvenile hammerhead shark before releasing it back into the Gulf waters. (854x562, AR: 1.519572953736655)
So, it’s no surprise that when a client reels in a shark, he likes to give them a biology lesson: how the shark’s eyes blink from bottom to top, how to distinguish male from female, and how the ampullae of Lorenzini, sharks’ nose receptors, detect electrical pulses for locating prey and navigating the ocean.
We eventually end up at a little spot Voyles calls Shark Hole, where the tarpon roll around at the deep-green surface and curious baby blacktip reef sharks swim right up to the boat. In the distance, dark storm clouds hover over the horizon.
Marjorie Sharks 1 Part 2.mp3
Marjorie Sharks 2 Part 2.mp3
“There’s a lot of life out here,” he marvels. “It’s so diverse, and that makes it an incredible resource.”
Not everyone in this corner of the state feels the same way, and across Florida, some recreational fishing guides aren’t as conscientious about sustainability. The 2022 Shark Fin Sales Elimination Act put many commercial shark fishermen out of business, but it didn’t limit the thousands of recreational fishers who catch sharks off of Florida’s coastline every day.
Scientists, policy experts, and commercial fishermen largely agree on this one thing: the recreational industry is not well monitored.
Casting for troubleFlorida’s recreational fishery is the largest in the world. Consequently, it’s a tricky place to be a shark.
In Florida, state waters extend for up to 3 miles offshore on the Atlantic side and 9 miles on the Gulf. Those zones have a long list of shark species that are prohibited from harvest. But venture beyond those limits into federal waters, and the rules change. It’s perfectly legal there to harvest, for example, a scalloped hammerhead or sand tiger shark, both of which are critically endangered. (All hammerheads are illegal to harvest in the U.S. Caribbean, however.)
A young fisherwoman displays a juvenile hammerhead in Jacksonville, Florida, circa 1947. (655x704, AR: 0.9303977272727273)
Although all recreational and charter fishing guides need permits to fish for sharks in federal waters, oversight and reporting are limited — unlike commercial fisheries, which are highly monitored and held to greater standards, explains Hannah Medd, founder of the nonprofit American Shark Conservancy, which focuses on the sustainable management of sharks and other cartilaginous fish.
“Our data collection on recreational fishing is terrible,” Medd, who studies sharks and rays as a conservation biologist, tells The Marjorie. “We don’t know what the actual behavior of a lot of these anglers are.”
But guides like Voyles are only one piece of the recreational fishery, which also includes the millions of individual Floridians who enjoy fishing as a hobby. In a 2015 National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) report on national fisheries statistics, for example, data show that recreational fishing accounts for twice as many caught sharks — excluding dogfish, a type of small shark — as commercial. And with unlimited recreational fishing permits at the state and federal level, overfishing remains a real risk, Medd adds.
“You can’t have unlimited access to limited resources. You just can’t.”<br/>
The recreational industry “has a much bigger impact on endangered species than people thought,” says David Shiffman, a marine conservation biologist and research associate at Arizona State University who focused on Florida’s recreational fisheries in his doctoral research at the University of Miami.
In theory, Shiffman says, commercial fisheries can’t drive a species to extinction because, by a certain point, so few animals remain that they’re not worth the expense of a fishing trip. But with recreational fishing, the motivation is a trophy, not a profit. So, rarer, bigger fish are prized more by recreational anglers than commercial fishermen. That’s a problem for threatened populations because good genetics — the superlatives — are more valuable.
“Recreational fishing is not the reason why any species is endangered,” Shiffman says, “but given that they’re already endangered, it can be a very significant threat in some cases.”
According to 2018 angling data from the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC), about 60% of fish are released back to the water alive after they are caught, a practice known as catch-and-release. Other estimates are as high as 95%, but these may not be accurate because it’s difficult to measure, Medd says.
Catch-and-release fishing is often championed as a sustainable way to enjoy sportfishing, but some species are more sensitive to being hooked, and therefore more likely to die after release, such as hammerheads.
Yet the private recreational sector has “such political clout that nothing has been done to end overfishing,” says Capt. Jimmy Hull, a commercial fisherman based in Ormond Beach, Florida. He remembers — with indignation — how flawed data and a lack of collaboration devastated the red snapper fishery, leading him straight to sharks.
Endangered fisheriesIn 2009, commercial red snapper fishing in the South Atlantic — Florida, Georgia, and South Carolina — shut down. Scientific data showed that the population was overfished. For Hull, red snapper was the “bread and butter” of his livelihood.
So, he switched to something else: sharks.
“To survive as a fisherman, you have to be diversified,” says Hull, a member of NOAA’s South Atlantic Fisheries Management Council, who also fishes commercially for blue crabs and other species.
Capt. Jimmy Hull, a commercial fisherman based in Ormond Beach, is one of only a few commercial fishermen in Florida who still targets sharks. The blue bin contains a mix of blacktips, finetooths, and spinners. (1168x564, AR: 2.0709219858156027)
Hull is one of the few commercial fishermen in Florida who still targets sharks and the only one to do so in Ponce Inlet. He is also one of the few who consistently attends NOAA Fisheries meetings to represent the commercial shark industry.
He owns two shark-fishing vessels, each with a short bottom longline, a type of fishing rig weighted to the bottom of the seafloor with dozens of baited hooks. After the lines “soak” for an hour or two, the fishermen haul up any catch, bait the hooks again, and repeat the process up to five times. Most trips end by the afternoon with 1,000 to 2,000 pounds of shark meat — because, Hull says, there are that many sharks.
But there aren’t many shark fishermen, Hull says. In fact, “there’s hardly anybody left.”
Before the 2022 shark fin ban, a dressed shark — meaning its head, tail, and guts are removed to prepare the meat for sale — was worth $1.50 per pound, Hull recalls. The biggest fins, however, would go for $20 to $25 per pound, so larger fins meant bigger revenues.
When the fin ban eliminated that portion of fishermen’s income, “that was pretty much the end of the shark fishery as we know it,” Hull says. Fins accounted for as much as 60% of the revenue from a single shark.
Now that the fins are worthless — by law, fishermen have to remove the fins on shore and dump them in the trash — the smaller, tastier sharks are prioritized to meet the rising demand for shark meat.
Fisherman Anthony Abbaleo holds two Atlantic sharpnose sharks. (403x719, AR: 0.5605006954102921)
Another flaw making the fishery unsustainable, Hull argues, are restrictive trip limits and outdated quotas. Fishermen are limited to taking eight blacknose sharks per fishing trip, for example. If they catch any more — which is likely because they’re “the mice of the sea,” Hull says — the law prohibits them from keeping extra sharks, dead or alive.
“Here we are with a dead animal that’s valuable — they’re very good to eat — and here we are just throwing them back,” Hull says. “I hate to waste the resource. That is a sin to me.”
Such regulations are intended to help manage shark populations, but they only apply to commercial fishing. Recreational anglers, on the other hand, have fewer limitations, little if any oversight, and no required data reporting in Florida. Hull, meanwhile, has to report his weekly catch weight, how much ice he used, how much bait he used, how many hooks he used — the list goes on.
“They get all the information they need from us on the commercial side,” Hull says.
While NOAA has made recent efforts to better collect recreational fishery data, monitoring the fishery is almost impossible, Hull contends. “To describe it as extremely flawed, or fatally flawed, is a good description of it,” he says. “It’s a complete guessing game.”
Although NOAA did not address The Marjorie’s request for comment about its monitoring program, a representative wrote in an email that the agency monitors commercial and recreational shark catches and quotas by using logbook reporting, fisheries observers, and vessel monitoring systems.
Allowing people to move to Florida’s vulnerable coastlines — contributing sales tax to the state by buying boats, motors, and equipment to fish in federal waters without restrictions — is at the root of the problem, Hull contends. “Until they get a handle on that, we’re going to continue to have these big problems.”
To have strong fisheries management, he argues, there needs to be strong science.
“You can’t have unlimited access to limited resources,” he says. “You just can’t.”
Fun over foodAt Hull’s Seafood, his market just north of Daytona Beach, grouper filet retails for $29.95 per pound. Shark meat, on the other hand, retails for only $6.95 per pound. The difference is simple supply and demand.
Shark isn’t something the average American consumer thinks of as table fare, Hull says, but his market educates its customers on how to cook and prepare the meat. One popular menu item in Hull’s affiliated restaurant is “shark bites,” tenderized chunks of fried shark meat. Whatever meat he doesn’t sell in his market or restaurant, Hull exports to Canada, which has a bigger appetite for sharks.
Shark meat for sale at Hull’s Seafood in Daytona Beach, Florida. (552x739, AR: 0.7469553450608931)
Usually, Hull’s generically labeled “shark meat” is Atlantic sharpnose, blacknose, finetooth, spinner, or blacktip reef shark — the more abundant, better-tasting, typically smaller species, Hull says. By marketing the low-cost, high-quality protein, he hopes seafood markets like his can help increase demand and therefore build a more robust commercial fishery.
So far, it’s working at Hull’s Seafood. People like the taste of shark meat. “And why wouldn’t they?” he says. “It’s good.”
Even though NOAA has published material encouraging the sale of sustainably harvested shark meat in the U.S. — and even though shark has been marketed as a cheap protein since the 1980s — some of Hull’s customers balk at the idea of buying it, falsely assuming the meat comes from an endangered species.
In Hull’s eyes, rebuilding a sustainable shark fishery would require increased monitoring, updating quotas according to more recent stock assessments, and increasing trip limits when appropriate. Hull also calls for more accurate data collection methods that can better inform regulations.
“I see a bright future for sharks,” he says, “as long as [policymakers] don’t try to destroy us.”
Rewarding recreation Florida’s recreational fishery is unlikely to ever be regulated as strictly as commercial fisheries, says Ryan Orgera, global director of the nonprofit Accountability.Fish. Indeed, Florida voters approved a constitutional amendment in November that makes hunting and fishing the “preferred means” of managing wildlife.
In doing so, Florida joined 23 other states that have constitutional hunting and fishing rights, but environmental lawyers have said Florida’s amendment contains especially sloppy language, including permission to use “traditional methods.”
As long as people perceive something as a problem, it is a problem. Perception is reality.”
Scientists and advocacy groups such as the Sierra Club expressed concern that this would mean hunting and fishing supersede other ways of managing wildlife. FWC itself supported the amendment — an action critics said undermines the agency’s commitment to science-based wildlife management.
“Traditional methods, does that include dynamite fishing?” Orgera asks. “I mean, that was used in Florida early on.” So were gillnets, which were banned in 1995 in landmark legislation to reduce the bycatch of porpoises and other large marine animals.
In September, FWC Chairman Rodney Barreto assured Floridians that the amendment wouldn’t reverse the gillnet ban while encouraging Floridians to vote yes on the measure. Several other FWC commissioners — two of whom contributed a combined $25,000 to the campaign — are real estate developers. All of them are gubernatorial appointees of Gov. DeSantis. Wildlife management decisions, Medd points out, are in their hands.
“I think we need to know more,” Medd adds. “We just need to have more focus on the recreational side and get kind of the truth behind all the talk.”
Preying on the predatorThose concerned about the recent amendment also worried it could open the door to more frequent organized hunts, such as an infamous citizen-led shark tournament in 2022. Dozens of anglers, armed with guns and fishing poles, took to their boats to kill as many sharks as possible off the coast of Jupiter, Florida.
The shark slaughter was an extreme example of how some anglers feel about a recent and pervasive problem in the fishing community known as depredation: when sharks chomp off an angler’s catch before reeling it in. From their perspective, there are too many sharks.
“One thing that is categorically false is that shark populations have exploded in Florida, which is not true,” Orgera of Accountability.Fish says.
Over the past 50 years, global shark populations have declined roughly 70%, but in the past decade or two, some populations have started to rebound, giving the illusion of booming shark populations. To some angry anglers, that’s a problem.
Marjorie Part 2 Tight Lines.mp4
“As long as people perceive something as a problem, it is a problem,” says Jasmin Graham, a shark scientist and co-founder of the nonprofit Minorities in Shark Sciences. “Perception is reality.”
On January 3, 2025, a bill was introduced in the House of Representatives under the title of “Supporting the Health of Aquatic systems through Research Knowledge and Enhanced Dialogue” — better known by its friendlier acronym, the SHARKED Act.
If it passes through both chambers of Congress and is signed by the president, the federal legislation will create a task force dedicated to convening experts and stakeholders to tackle depredation nationwide. It will also set aside funds for much-needed depredation research.
Harmless as it may seem, scientists such as Graham are concerned such conversations could quickly escalate.
Take “Jaws,” for example — the most famous shark movie in the world.
Muddled voices talk over each other in a cramped hallway as disgruntled men and women file into a classroom for a town hall discussion about how to handle the shark that killed Alex M. Kintner. Martin Brody, the Amity police chief, nervously glances around the room as the town’s business owners loudly complain about the beach shutdown.
Then, heads turn toward the skin-crawling screech of nails on chalkboard. “I’ll catch this bird for ya, but it ain’t gonna be easy,” drawls Capt. Quint. “It’s a bad fish.”
Graham worries this fictional scene could become reality.
“We are concerned that there are not enough guardrails, and there’s not enough strategy and purpose associated with the current bill as it stands,” Graham says. “We need to think about the messaging and how it’s framed.”
Depredation is a real issue, she tells me, but the argument that there are “too many sharks” is not substantiated. There are a slew of factors in shark-angler interactions that have gone overlooked: poor habitat quality, declining fish stocks, sharks habituating to fishing boats, and, most importantly, a concept called shifting baseline syndrome.
Decades ago, shark populations were robust relative to today’s standards. But over time, as the commercial shark fishery ramped up, as fishing technology became more advanced, and as more anglers permeated the ocean, those populations started to plummet.
In response, NOAA enacted its first-ever federal fishery management plan for sharks in the Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Mexico in 1993 — the same year shark finning became illegal in U.S. waters. The plan implemented permits, limited how many sharks could be kept recreationally, and placed quotas on commercial fishing catches.
Now that conservation efforts are showing signs of success, the increase in sharks looks extreme for current generations who didn’t grow up seeing this many of them. But in reality, shark densities are far from what they once were, Graham says.
Sharks are important predators, she adds. Without them, ecosystems would collapse in a domino effect known in ecology as a trophic cascade. When apex predator populations steeply decline, it allows the next tier of species to proliferate out of control, creating a positive feedback loop that destabilizes the food web, Graham explains. (This famously happened in Yellowstone National Park when grey wolves were hunted to near-extinction.)
Healthy oceans, she emphasizes, are key. And healthy oceans should be the focus of depredation solutions. If there aren’t enough fish in the sea for sharks, Graham points out, then there aren’t enough fish in the sea for anglers. Actionable steps to address depredation are necessary, she says, but it needs to be done thoughtfully.
The problem is worsened, Medd says, by people taking the issue into their own hands and in ways that are not only unsustainable, but also cruel.
Florida anglers were charged with animal cruelty for shooting and then dragging a shark from the back of a high-speed boat in 2017. Divers have also reported a slew of unusual sightings out in open waters: sharks with knives stuck in their heads, bullets in their sides, and hooks still clinging to the corners of their mouths. But sharks have small brains, and if their brain isn’t struck, they will continue to swim around with their wounds.
This 1981 newspaper clipping from the Fernandina Beach News-Leader details how to fish for “angry” sharks. (776x721, AR: 1.0762829403606102)
Ernest Hemingway describes this in his famous novella, “The Old Man and the Sea.” Santiago, the protagonist and a Cuban fisherman, drives a harpoon into the “spot where the line between [the mako’s] eyes intersected with the line that ran straight back from his nose … the location of the brain.” He does so with “complete malignancy,” as he later stabs, punches, and clubs the other sharks to their deaths — to no avail, bringing back to shore only the mutilated carcass of his record-breaking marlin.
Hemingway detailed these interactions in the 1950s, but our interactions with sharks have existed for centuries. Depredation research is still in its infancy, so there aren’t yet reliable answers to why more sharks seem to be nabbing anglers’ catches.
In the meantime, one man is trying to lead by example.
Casting hopeI caught close to 10 sharks with Capt. Voyles on that warm day in mid-July: two young hammerheads and a large tally of blacktip reef sharks. The latter is a common catch in the Gulf of Mexico, and one of the few species that’s legal for harvest in state waters. Blacktips are great table fare, Voyles tells me, but that day, we released them all.
Some of Voyles’ favorite clients are students and researchers. Like him, they’re concerned about keeping fisheries sustainable for years to come, he says. Taking clients out on fishing trips is an effective way to spread that mindset.
“We can educate people while we’re out here fishing for sharks,” he tells me. “They’re not just eating machines.” Plus, it’s cool for clients to see them up close. Sometimes, they can even touch them. “When you touch an animal like that, you kind of feel a little more connected,” he says.
He’s spreading the message one client at a time, but in this tiny Gulf Coast town, reaching the masses is no easy feat. Word spreads quicker on social media.
This story was produced in partnership with the Florida Climate Reporting Network, a multi-newsroom initiative founded by the Miami Herald, the Sun-Sentinel, The Palm Beach Post, the Orlando Sentinel, WLRN Public Media and the Tampa Bay Times.
Capt. Denny Voyles isn’t one to brag, but he is the go-to guy for shark fishing in Cedar Key.
The Florida town of less than 1,000 residents is nestled in a small crevice of the Gulf Coast. On either side of the two-way road into town, roseate spoonbills forage in the marshes, and pods of dolphins frolic in view of oceanfront restaurants.
When tourists fly down from the Midwest looking for some rod action, they call Voyles. “I’ve got a lot of people who are absolutely hooked,” he says, ignoring the pun. “They’re just addicted to shark fishing.”
That’s why I called him, too.
Capt. Denny Voyles is well known as a recreational shark fishing guide in Cedar Key, Florida. (854x526, AR: 1.623574144486692)
Cedar Key is known better for clamming than shark fishing, but Voyles has found success in the latter for the past two decades. Summertime is peak season for sharks: when television popularizes the predators during shark-themed programming like Shark Week, and when the Gulf of Mexico’s warm waters are most welcoming.
We head out on the Gulf on a warm Monday morning. When the smoke from the Crystal River power plant is drifting straight up, “that means it’s calm,” Voyles says. On a four-hour trip, it isn’t uncommon for him to catch 12 to 15 sharks, typically ranging from 2 to 8 feet in length.
“Some of the [fishing] guides just don’t like sitting here and waiting,” he says as we wait for a bite. “But when you hook one, it’s pretty exciting.”
At this first fishing spot a few miles offshore, Voyles anchors the boat, throws a mesh bag of frozen chum over the side, and then saws into a frozen ladyfish. He strings a large chunk of this “shark sushi” to the hook, leaded with a thick wire so the sharks can’t bite through it.
He lobs the heavy bait into the water with a ker-plunk! After stationing the rod in a holder, Voyles gives me instructions: “When the rods take off, when he bumps you hard, you set that up and start reeling.”
Capt. Denny Voyles drops a hunk of ladyfish into Gulf waters during a shark fishing trip. (800x177, AR: 4.519774011299435)
The breeze cuts out, leaving us to drip in sweat as we wait for the first bite.
Suddenly, the bobber disappears beneath the surface, and the fishing line whirs, bvvvvvvvvzzzzzzzzz!
“There we go, there we go!” Voyles says as I jump on the rod. It doesn’t take long for my muscles to start burning. Whatever was on the end of the line felt like a fast-moving 200 pounds.
After a long fight, we haul up a juvenile scalloped hammerhead, a protected species, and release it back into the water. The hammerhead swims in circles a couple times before disappearing into the depths.
I recalled conversations with scientists about hammerheads being especially vulnerable to what’s called post-catch mortality. High stress — like from fighting a line — produces excess lactic acid, which can kill them.
Voyles tells me he catches hammerheads from time to time but “they’re kinda rare.”
Voyles is somewhat of a rarity himself. The 69-year-old is also a retired teacher of 38 years, leading high school and middle school math, agriculture, chemistry, and history classes. He took pride and responsibility in the profession, just as he does with fishing.
Capt. Denny Voyles pulls up a juvenile hammerhead shark before releasing it back into the Gulf waters. (854x562, AR: 1.519572953736655)
So, it’s no surprise that when a client reels in a shark, he likes to give them a biology lesson: how the shark’s eyes blink from bottom to top, how to distinguish male from female, and how the ampullae of Lorenzini, sharks’ nose receptors, detect electrical pulses for locating prey and navigating the ocean.
We eventually end up at a little spot Voyles calls Shark Hole, where the tarpon roll around at the deep-green surface and curious baby blacktip reef sharks swim right up to the boat. In the distance, dark storm clouds hover over the horizon.
Marjorie Sharks 1 Part 2.mp3
Marjorie Sharks 2 Part 2.mp3
“There’s a lot of life out here,” he marvels. “It’s so diverse, and that makes it an incredible resource.”
Not everyone in this corner of the state feels the same way, and across Florida, some recreational fishing guides aren’t as conscientious about sustainability. The 2022 Shark Fin Sales Elimination Act put many commercial shark fishermen out of business, but it didn’t limit the thousands of recreational fishers who catch sharks off of Florida’s coastline every day.
Scientists, policy experts, and commercial fishermen largely agree on this one thing: the recreational industry is not well monitored.
Casting for troubleFlorida’s recreational fishery is the largest in the world. Consequently, it’s a tricky place to be a shark.
In Florida, state waters extend for up to 3 miles offshore on the Atlantic side and 9 miles on the Gulf. Those zones have a long list of shark species that are prohibited from harvest. But venture beyond those limits into federal waters, and the rules change. It’s perfectly legal there to harvest, for example, a scalloped hammerhead or sand tiger shark, both of which are critically endangered. (All hammerheads are illegal to harvest in the U.S. Caribbean, however.)
A young fisherwoman displays a juvenile hammerhead in Jacksonville, Florida, circa 1947. (655x704, AR: 0.9303977272727273)
Although all recreational and charter fishing guides need permits to fish for sharks in federal waters, oversight and reporting are limited — unlike commercial fisheries, which are highly monitored and held to greater standards, explains Hannah Medd, founder of the nonprofit American Shark Conservancy, which focuses on the sustainable management of sharks and other cartilaginous fish.
“Our data collection on recreational fishing is terrible,” Medd, who studies sharks and rays as a conservation biologist, tells The Marjorie. “We don’t know what the actual behavior of a lot of these anglers are.”
But guides like Voyles are only one piece of the recreational fishery, which also includes the millions of individual Floridians who enjoy fishing as a hobby. In a 2015 National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) report on national fisheries statistics, for example, data show that recreational fishing accounts for twice as many caught sharks — excluding dogfish, a type of small shark — as commercial. And with unlimited recreational fishing permits at the state and federal level, overfishing remains a real risk, Medd adds.
“You can’t have unlimited access to limited resources. You just can’t.”<br/>
The recreational industry “has a much bigger impact on endangered species than people thought,” says David Shiffman, a marine conservation biologist and research associate at Arizona State University who focused on Florida’s recreational fisheries in his doctoral research at the University of Miami.
In theory, Shiffman says, commercial fisheries can’t drive a species to extinction because, by a certain point, so few animals remain that they’re not worth the expense of a fishing trip. But with recreational fishing, the motivation is a trophy, not a profit. So, rarer, bigger fish are prized more by recreational anglers than commercial fishermen. That’s a problem for threatened populations because good genetics — the superlatives — are more valuable.
“Recreational fishing is not the reason why any species is endangered,” Shiffman says, “but given that they’re already endangered, it can be a very significant threat in some cases.”
According to 2018 angling data from the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC), about 60% of fish are released back to the water alive after they are caught, a practice known as catch-and-release. Other estimates are as high as 95%, but these may not be accurate because it’s difficult to measure, Medd says.
Catch-and-release fishing is often championed as a sustainable way to enjoy sportfishing, but some species are more sensitive to being hooked, and therefore more likely to die after release, such as hammerheads.
Yet the private recreational sector has “such political clout that nothing has been done to end overfishing,” says Capt. Jimmy Hull, a commercial fisherman based in Ormond Beach, Florida. He remembers — with indignation — how flawed data and a lack of collaboration devastated the red snapper fishery, leading him straight to sharks.
Endangered fisheriesIn 2009, commercial red snapper fishing in the South Atlantic — Florida, Georgia, and South Carolina — shut down. Scientific data showed that the population was overfished. For Hull, red snapper was the “bread and butter” of his livelihood.
So, he switched to something else: sharks.
“To survive as a fisherman, you have to be diversified,” says Hull, a member of NOAA’s South Atlantic Fisheries Management Council, who also fishes commercially for blue crabs and other species.
Capt. Jimmy Hull, a commercial fisherman based in Ormond Beach, is one of only a few commercial fishermen in Florida who still targets sharks. The blue bin contains a mix of blacktips, finetooths, and spinners. (1168x564, AR: 2.0709219858156027)
Hull is one of the few commercial fishermen in Florida who still targets sharks and the only one to do so in Ponce Inlet. He is also one of the few who consistently attends NOAA Fisheries meetings to represent the commercial shark industry.
He owns two shark-fishing vessels, each with a short bottom longline, a type of fishing rig weighted to the bottom of the seafloor with dozens of baited hooks. After the lines “soak” for an hour or two, the fishermen haul up any catch, bait the hooks again, and repeat the process up to five times. Most trips end by the afternoon with 1,000 to 2,000 pounds of shark meat — because, Hull says, there are that many sharks.
But there aren’t many shark fishermen, Hull says. In fact, “there’s hardly anybody left.”
Before the 2022 shark fin ban, a dressed shark — meaning its head, tail, and guts are removed to prepare the meat for sale — was worth $1.50 per pound, Hull recalls. The biggest fins, however, would go for $20 to $25 per pound, so larger fins meant bigger revenues.
When the fin ban eliminated that portion of fishermen’s income, “that was pretty much the end of the shark fishery as we know it,” Hull says. Fins accounted for as much as 60% of the revenue from a single shark.
Now that the fins are worthless — by law, fishermen have to remove the fins on shore and dump them in the trash — the smaller, tastier sharks are prioritized to meet the rising demand for shark meat.
Fisherman Anthony Abbaleo holds two Atlantic sharpnose sharks. (403x719, AR: 0.5605006954102921)
Another flaw making the fishery unsustainable, Hull argues, are restrictive trip limits and outdated quotas. Fishermen are limited to taking eight blacknose sharks per fishing trip, for example. If they catch any more — which is likely because they’re “the mice of the sea,” Hull says — the law prohibits them from keeping extra sharks, dead or alive.
“Here we are with a dead animal that’s valuable — they’re very good to eat — and here we are just throwing them back,” Hull says. “I hate to waste the resource. That is a sin to me.”
Such regulations are intended to help manage shark populations, but they only apply to commercial fishing. Recreational anglers, on the other hand, have fewer limitations, little if any oversight, and no required data reporting in Florida. Hull, meanwhile, has to report his weekly catch weight, how much ice he used, how much bait he used, how many hooks he used — the list goes on.
“They get all the information they need from us on the commercial side,” Hull says.
While NOAA has made recent efforts to better collect recreational fishery data, monitoring the fishery is almost impossible, Hull contends. “To describe it as extremely flawed, or fatally flawed, is a good description of it,” he says. “It’s a complete guessing game.”
Although NOAA did not address The Marjorie’s request for comment about its monitoring program, a representative wrote in an email that the agency monitors commercial and recreational shark catches and quotas by using logbook reporting, fisheries observers, and vessel monitoring systems.
Allowing people to move to Florida’s vulnerable coastlines — contributing sales tax to the state by buying boats, motors, and equipment to fish in federal waters without restrictions — is at the root of the problem, Hull contends. “Until they get a handle on that, we’re going to continue to have these big problems.”
To have strong fisheries management, he argues, there needs to be strong science.
“You can’t have unlimited access to limited resources,” he says. “You just can’t.”
Fun over foodAt Hull’s Seafood, his market just north of Daytona Beach, grouper filet retails for $29.95 per pound. Shark meat, on the other hand, retails for only $6.95 per pound. The difference is simple supply and demand.
Shark isn’t something the average American consumer thinks of as table fare, Hull says, but his market educates its customers on how to cook and prepare the meat. One popular menu item in Hull’s affiliated restaurant is “shark bites,” tenderized chunks of fried shark meat. Whatever meat he doesn’t sell in his market or restaurant, Hull exports to Canada, which has a bigger appetite for sharks.
Shark meat for sale at Hull’s Seafood in Daytona Beach, Florida. (552x739, AR: 0.7469553450608931)
Usually, Hull’s generically labeled “shark meat” is Atlantic sharpnose, blacknose, finetooth, spinner, or blacktip reef shark — the more abundant, better-tasting, typically smaller species, Hull says. By marketing the low-cost, high-quality protein, he hopes seafood markets like his can help increase demand and therefore build a more robust commercial fishery.
So far, it’s working at Hull’s Seafood. People like the taste of shark meat. “And why wouldn’t they?” he says. “It’s good.”
Even though NOAA has published material encouraging the sale of sustainably harvested shark meat in the U.S. — and even though shark has been marketed as a cheap protein since the 1980s — some of Hull’s customers balk at the idea of buying it, falsely assuming the meat comes from an endangered species.
In Hull’s eyes, rebuilding a sustainable shark fishery would require increased monitoring, updating quotas according to more recent stock assessments, and increasing trip limits when appropriate. Hull also calls for more accurate data collection methods that can better inform regulations.
“I see a bright future for sharks,” he says, “as long as [policymakers] don’t try to destroy us.”
Rewarding recreation Florida’s recreational fishery is unlikely to ever be regulated as strictly as commercial fisheries, says Ryan Orgera, global director of the nonprofit Accountability.Fish. Indeed, Florida voters approved a constitutional amendment in November that makes hunting and fishing the “preferred means” of managing wildlife.
In doing so, Florida joined 23 other states that have constitutional hunting and fishing rights, but environmental lawyers have said Florida’s amendment contains especially sloppy language, including permission to use “traditional methods.”
As long as people perceive something as a problem, it is a problem. Perception is reality.”
Scientists and advocacy groups such as the Sierra Club expressed concern that this would mean hunting and fishing supersede other ways of managing wildlife. FWC itself supported the amendment — an action critics said undermines the agency’s commitment to science-based wildlife management.
“Traditional methods, does that include dynamite fishing?” Orgera asks. “I mean, that was used in Florida early on.” So were gillnets, which were banned in 1995 in landmark legislation to reduce the bycatch of porpoises and other large marine animals.
In September, FWC Chairman Rodney Barreto assured Floridians that the amendment wouldn’t reverse the gillnet ban while encouraging Floridians to vote yes on the measure. Several other FWC commissioners — two of whom contributed a combined $25,000 to the campaign — are real estate developers. All of them are gubernatorial appointees of Gov. DeSantis. Wildlife management decisions, Medd points out, are in their hands.
“I think we need to know more,” Medd adds. “We just need to have more focus on the recreational side and get kind of the truth behind all the talk.”
Preying on the predatorThose concerned about the recent amendment also worried it could open the door to more frequent organized hunts, such as an infamous citizen-led shark tournament in 2022. Dozens of anglers, armed with guns and fishing poles, took to their boats to kill as many sharks as possible off the coast of Jupiter, Florida.
The shark slaughter was an extreme example of how some anglers feel about a recent and pervasive problem in the fishing community known as depredation: when sharks chomp off an angler’s catch before reeling it in. From their perspective, there are too many sharks.
“One thing that is categorically false is that shark populations have exploded in Florida, which is not true,” Orgera of Accountability.Fish says.
Over the past 50 years, global shark populations have declined roughly 70%, but in the past decade or two, some populations have started to rebound, giving the illusion of booming shark populations. To some angry anglers, that’s a problem.
Marjorie Part 2 Tight Lines.mp4
“As long as people perceive something as a problem, it is a problem,” says Jasmin Graham, a shark scientist and co-founder of the nonprofit Minorities in Shark Sciences. “Perception is reality.”
On January 3, 2025, a bill was introduced in the House of Representatives under the title of “Supporting the Health of Aquatic systems through Research Knowledge and Enhanced Dialogue” — better known by its friendlier acronym, the SHARKED Act.
If it passes through both chambers of Congress and is signed by the president, the federal legislation will create a task force dedicated to convening experts and stakeholders to tackle depredation nationwide. It will also set aside funds for much-needed depredation research.
Harmless as it may seem, scientists such as Graham are concerned such conversations could quickly escalate.
Take “Jaws,” for example — the most famous shark movie in the world.
Muddled voices talk over each other in a cramped hallway as disgruntled men and women file into a classroom for a town hall discussion about how to handle the shark that killed Alex M. Kintner. Martin Brody, the Amity police chief, nervously glances around the room as the town’s business owners loudly complain about the beach shutdown.
Then, heads turn toward the skin-crawling screech of nails on chalkboard. “I’ll catch this bird for ya, but it ain’t gonna be easy,” drawls Capt. Quint. “It’s a bad fish.”
Graham worries this fictional scene could become reality.
“We are concerned that there are not enough guardrails, and there’s not enough strategy and purpose associated with the current bill as it stands,” Graham says. “We need to think about the messaging and how it’s framed.”
Depredation is a real issue, she tells me, but the argument that there are “too many sharks” is not substantiated. There are a slew of factors in shark-angler interactions that have gone overlooked: poor habitat quality, declining fish stocks, sharks habituating to fishing boats, and, most importantly, a concept called shifting baseline syndrome.
Decades ago, shark populations were robust relative to today’s standards. But over time, as the commercial shark fishery ramped up, as fishing technology became more advanced, and as more anglers permeated the ocean, those populations started to plummet.
In response, NOAA enacted its first-ever federal fishery management plan for sharks in the Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Mexico in 1993 — the same year shark finning became illegal in U.S. waters. The plan implemented permits, limited how many sharks could be kept recreationally, and placed quotas on commercial fishing catches.
Now that conservation efforts are showing signs of success, the increase in sharks looks extreme for current generations who didn’t grow up seeing this many of them. But in reality, shark densities are far from what they once were, Graham says.
Sharks are important predators, she adds. Without them, ecosystems would collapse in a domino effect known in ecology as a trophic cascade. When apex predator populations steeply decline, it allows the next tier of species to proliferate out of control, creating a positive feedback loop that destabilizes the food web, Graham explains. (This famously happened in Yellowstone National Park when grey wolves were hunted to near-extinction.)
Healthy oceans, she emphasizes, are key. And healthy oceans should be the focus of depredation solutions. If there aren’t enough fish in the sea for sharks, Graham points out, then there aren’t enough fish in the sea for anglers. Actionable steps to address depredation are necessary, she says, but it needs to be done thoughtfully.
The problem is worsened, Medd says, by people taking the issue into their own hands and in ways that are not only unsustainable, but also cruel.
Florida anglers were charged with animal cruelty for shooting and then dragging a shark from the back of a high-speed boat in 2017. Divers have also reported a slew of unusual sightings out in open waters: sharks with knives stuck in their heads, bullets in their sides, and hooks still clinging to the corners of their mouths. But sharks have small brains, and if their brain isn’t struck, they will continue to swim around with their wounds.
This 1981 newspaper clipping from the Fernandina Beach News-Leader details how to fish for “angry” sharks. (776x721, AR: 1.0762829403606102)
Ernest Hemingway describes this in his famous novella, “The Old Man and the Sea.” Santiago, the protagonist and a Cuban fisherman, drives a harpoon into the “spot where the line between [the mako’s] eyes intersected with the line that ran straight back from his nose … the location of the brain.” He does so with “complete malignancy,” as he later stabs, punches, and clubs the other sharks to their deaths — to no avail, bringing back to shore only the mutilated carcass of his record-breaking marlin.
Hemingway detailed these interactions in the 1950s, but our interactions with sharks have existed for centuries. Depredation research is still in its infancy, so there aren’t yet reliable answers to why more sharks seem to be nabbing anglers’ catches.
In the meantime, one man is trying to lead by example.
Casting hopeI caught close to 10 sharks with Capt. Voyles on that warm day in mid-July: two young hammerheads and a large tally of blacktip reef sharks. The latter is a common catch in the Gulf of Mexico, and one of the few species that’s legal for harvest in state waters. Blacktips are great table fare, Voyles tells me, but that day, we released them all.
Some of Voyles’ favorite clients are students and researchers. Like him, they’re concerned about keeping fisheries sustainable for years to come, he says. Taking clients out on fishing trips is an effective way to spread that mindset.
“We can educate people while we’re out here fishing for sharks,” he tells me. “They’re not just eating machines.” Plus, it’s cool for clients to see them up close. Sometimes, they can even touch them. “When you touch an animal like that, you kind of feel a little more connected,” he says.
He’s spreading the message one client at a time, but in this tiny Gulf Coast town, reaching the masses is no easy feat. Word spreads quicker on social media.
This story was produced in partnership with the Florida Climate Reporting Network, a multi-newsroom initiative founded by the Miami Herald, the Sun-Sentinel, The Palm Beach Post, the Orlando Sentinel, WLRN Public Media and the Tampa Bay Times.