Post by Sharki on Mar 14, 2006 12:08:59 GMT -5
CARLOS TIRADO, 31, is the owner of the local fishing company whose boat caught the 2,200 pound Great White shark two weekends ago. Here Tirado holds the shark's jaws.
EL GOLFO DE SANTA CLARA, Son. - The high number - and sheer size - of sharks that are turning up in fishing nets in this Mexican beach town has local fishermen, shark experts and tourists all scratching their heads.
News of a sudden wave of netted sharks, great white sharks among them, raises questions for U.S. tourists just weeks before Easter and spring break festivities in El Golfo are expected to attract thousands of tourists to the beaches of this sleepy fishing village.
In the past two weeks, fishermen have caught eight sharks, all over 700 pounds, in nets that were intended to land snapper fish and shrimp, according to Carlos Agustin, who works at the local fish shop that buys the shark remains from fishermen to resell them as meat for fillets.
Agustin said he has never seen so many sharks in one season. He said some years, he doesn't see that many sharks for an entire year.
Three of the sharks weighed more than 1,500 pounds, and one shark, which has been highly publicized in Mexican newspapers across Sonora and Baja California, weighed in over a ton - at 2,200 pounds.
"It was the biggest shark I've ever seen," said Geraldo Maldonado, a fisherman who helped lift the 14 -foot shark - which was still alive- up out of the water after it was caught in his boat's shrimping net.
Carlos Tirado, owner of the fish company that caught the one ton-plus shark, said he has heard stories about a ton-and-a-half shark that was caught in the 1960s in El Golfo, which would have been the last time such a massive shark was caught off these shores.
The Sun sent the photo of the shark to the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego.
Richard Rosenblatt, a professor emeritus of marine biology at Scripps, said that based on the shark's large gills and triangular teeth, there is "no doubt" that the shark is a Carcharodon- the scientific genus classification of a great white shark.
Mexican marine biologist Juan Carlos Perez agreed.
"If you're talking about sharks that weight more than a half-ton (in the Sea of Cortez), it's probable that they are great white sharks," he said.
Perez, a postgraduate marine biologist at the CICESE science and technology research center in Ensenada, Baja Calif., is an expert in sharks in the Sea of Cortez.
Earlier this year, he published his discovery of a new shark species in the Sea of Cortez, which was the first new shark find in the wildlife-rich inlet in 34 years.
He said there are about 20 known shark species in the northern portion of the Sea of Cortez, great whites among them. Perez said sharks go up into the waters near El Golfo to give birth this time of year.
"Wow!" he said, when he heard news that eight sharks, all weighing over 700 pounds, have surfaced near El Golfo in the last two weeks. "That's a lot of big sharks."
Neither he nor Rosenblatt said they knew why so many sharks would be off the shores of El Golfo, given the information they were provided by The Sun.
Tirado and other local fishermen theorize that the sudden increase in sharks is due to an increase in corvina fish and shrimp off the shores of El Golfo this season, though they have no statistical or scientific data supporting those increases.
Tirado said sharks follow shrimp and fish into the gulf as they feed. So around this time of year, prime shrimping and fishing season in El Golfo, a few sharks tend to turn up, Tirado said.
The area's tourism director Sergio Gutierrez called the sharks an "isolated incident" which will not likely affect the influx of tens of thousands tourists from the United States who visit this beach town each year during the second week in April.
Gutierrez stressed that all of the sharks have been found by boats fishing miles offshore.
Tirado said most of the sharks are all turning up in a deep trench several miles offshore, and that he doubts that sharks would have reason to come closer to the shore.
San Luis judge Rosendo Morales said he has been going to El Golfo for 25 years.
"That's gnarly. That's scary," he said upon hearing about the sudden spike in surfacing sharks. He said he rarely hears of sharks showing up off the shores of El Golfo.
Morales said he will likely let his three children swim in the ocean when he goes down to El Golfo in April, he said, since the sharks are being encountered well off the shore.
"But my wife probably would not agree with me," he said.
Standing atop one of his beached rusty “pangas”- the Spanish word for a small fishing boat- Tirado joked with some of the fishermen who were on the boat when the one-ton shark was netted.
"They are ‘matatiburones,’ ” he joked, calling his employees “shark killers.”
One of them, Benjamin Reynado, took a break from unloading the boat full of slimy corvina fish to describe what it was like to pull the shark out of the ocean.
He squatted down in his yellow slicker, and then stood up, bringing his hands to his chin with his elbows out, as if giving a giant wedgy.
"It's dangerous to try to kill a shark that big when it's still alive," he said, adding that he and other fishermen dragged the shark ashore while it was still alive, and put in on display outside a local restaurant.
Tirado said one tourist tried to take a picture of the shark when it was still alive.
"The shark snapped at the man, and he jumped back and dropped his camera," Tirado said, laughing. "It was very rare, a sight to see."
But he said he wanted to make it clear that fishermen have no interest in catching the sharks, and that the netted sharks are all accidents.
He said when a fisherman nets a shark, it takes valuable time to untangle the shark, time that could be better used catching corvina or shrimp.
sun.yumasun.com/artman/publish/articles/story_22906.php
EL GOLFO DE SANTA CLARA, Son. - The high number - and sheer size - of sharks that are turning up in fishing nets in this Mexican beach town has local fishermen, shark experts and tourists all scratching their heads.
News of a sudden wave of netted sharks, great white sharks among them, raises questions for U.S. tourists just weeks before Easter and spring break festivities in El Golfo are expected to attract thousands of tourists to the beaches of this sleepy fishing village.
In the past two weeks, fishermen have caught eight sharks, all over 700 pounds, in nets that were intended to land snapper fish and shrimp, according to Carlos Agustin, who works at the local fish shop that buys the shark remains from fishermen to resell them as meat for fillets.
Agustin said he has never seen so many sharks in one season. He said some years, he doesn't see that many sharks for an entire year.
Three of the sharks weighed more than 1,500 pounds, and one shark, which has been highly publicized in Mexican newspapers across Sonora and Baja California, weighed in over a ton - at 2,200 pounds.
"It was the biggest shark I've ever seen," said Geraldo Maldonado, a fisherman who helped lift the 14 -foot shark - which was still alive- up out of the water after it was caught in his boat's shrimping net.
Carlos Tirado, owner of the fish company that caught the one ton-plus shark, said he has heard stories about a ton-and-a-half shark that was caught in the 1960s in El Golfo, which would have been the last time such a massive shark was caught off these shores.
The Sun sent the photo of the shark to the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego.
Richard Rosenblatt, a professor emeritus of marine biology at Scripps, said that based on the shark's large gills and triangular teeth, there is "no doubt" that the shark is a Carcharodon- the scientific genus classification of a great white shark.
Mexican marine biologist Juan Carlos Perez agreed.
"If you're talking about sharks that weight more than a half-ton (in the Sea of Cortez), it's probable that they are great white sharks," he said.
Perez, a postgraduate marine biologist at the CICESE science and technology research center in Ensenada, Baja Calif., is an expert in sharks in the Sea of Cortez.
Earlier this year, he published his discovery of a new shark species in the Sea of Cortez, which was the first new shark find in the wildlife-rich inlet in 34 years.
He said there are about 20 known shark species in the northern portion of the Sea of Cortez, great whites among them. Perez said sharks go up into the waters near El Golfo to give birth this time of year.
"Wow!" he said, when he heard news that eight sharks, all weighing over 700 pounds, have surfaced near El Golfo in the last two weeks. "That's a lot of big sharks."
Neither he nor Rosenblatt said they knew why so many sharks would be off the shores of El Golfo, given the information they were provided by The Sun.
Tirado and other local fishermen theorize that the sudden increase in sharks is due to an increase in corvina fish and shrimp off the shores of El Golfo this season, though they have no statistical or scientific data supporting those increases.
Tirado said sharks follow shrimp and fish into the gulf as they feed. So around this time of year, prime shrimping and fishing season in El Golfo, a few sharks tend to turn up, Tirado said.
The area's tourism director Sergio Gutierrez called the sharks an "isolated incident" which will not likely affect the influx of tens of thousands tourists from the United States who visit this beach town each year during the second week in April.
Gutierrez stressed that all of the sharks have been found by boats fishing miles offshore.
Tirado said most of the sharks are all turning up in a deep trench several miles offshore, and that he doubts that sharks would have reason to come closer to the shore.
San Luis judge Rosendo Morales said he has been going to El Golfo for 25 years.
"That's gnarly. That's scary," he said upon hearing about the sudden spike in surfacing sharks. He said he rarely hears of sharks showing up off the shores of El Golfo.
Morales said he will likely let his three children swim in the ocean when he goes down to El Golfo in April, he said, since the sharks are being encountered well off the shore.
"But my wife probably would not agree with me," he said.
Standing atop one of his beached rusty “pangas”- the Spanish word for a small fishing boat- Tirado joked with some of the fishermen who were on the boat when the one-ton shark was netted.
"They are ‘matatiburones,’ ” he joked, calling his employees “shark killers.”
One of them, Benjamin Reynado, took a break from unloading the boat full of slimy corvina fish to describe what it was like to pull the shark out of the ocean.
He squatted down in his yellow slicker, and then stood up, bringing his hands to his chin with his elbows out, as if giving a giant wedgy.
"It's dangerous to try to kill a shark that big when it's still alive," he said, adding that he and other fishermen dragged the shark ashore while it was still alive, and put in on display outside a local restaurant.
Tirado said one tourist tried to take a picture of the shark when it was still alive.
"The shark snapped at the man, and he jumped back and dropped his camera," Tirado said, laughing. "It was very rare, a sight to see."
But he said he wanted to make it clear that fishermen have no interest in catching the sharks, and that the netted sharks are all accidents.
He said when a fisherman nets a shark, it takes valuable time to untangle the shark, time that could be better used catching corvina or shrimp.
sun.yumasun.com/artman/publish/articles/story_22906.php