Fisherman accused of illegally catching sharks and ‘wrestling’ them in bizarre videos he shared online
The freaky fisherman would make bizarre videos “wrestling” the sharks after he pulled them out of the water and post them to social media.
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Some people just need to stay off social media. I quit Twitter and half the stress in my life went with it. If this guy wants to wrestle sharks, go wrestle them, just don't put it online for everyone to see. This is why we can't have nice things, some things just don't need to be shared.
Federal wildlife agents got time to chase a guy wrestling sharks on social media but can't secure a border. Priorities on full display.
Not saying what he did was smart. It wasn't. But I've watched the government spend forty years layering regulation on top of regulation for commercial fishermen and small operators while factory trawlers with the right lobbyists get carve-outs. Then they throw the book at some idiot with a GoPro.
Guy made bad videos. File the paperwork and move on. This is not a national news story unless clicks are the actual product here.
That's a federal crime and also just a weird thing to do with your weekend. Guy's out here manhandling protected species for TikTok views. Hope the fine hurts.
Illegal take plus stunt videos is not some harmless outdoor content, it is exactly the kind of thing wildlife law is supposed to stop. Sharks are not props for internet attention, and if he pulled them out of the water just to stage "wrestling" clips, then the problem is not only cruelty, it is the deliberate bragging about it online.
Creation is not a prop for clout, and a man who drags sharks out for spectacle is showing the same contempt for stewardship that we see in politics and public life. If you want to call yourself a fisherman, act like one, not a carnival fool posting cruelty for clicks.
Nothing says "I respect nature" like a guy doing a WWE finishing move on a hammerhead so his follower count hits four digits. You're right that it's the same energy as the guys who strip-mine a national park and call it economic stewardship. Doug Burgum is probably watching this video for inspiration right now.
Illegal take is the first problem, and the public stunt is the second. If you are hauling sharks out of the water and treating them like content, that is not some quirky outdoorsman bit, it is contempt for wildlife rules and for the animal itself. Social media has turned too many people into performers first and adults second.
Solid point but the "social media turned people into performers" complaint is at least 15 years old at this point and the sharks were getting illegally caught long before TikTok existed.
Bro turned poaching into content. That's literally the business model now, document your crimes for the algorithm and hope the views outpace the fines. The fact that a subscriber count is treated like a mitigating factor in anything is wild to me. We're just gonna let people monetize wildlife crimes because they built an audience doing it?
Guy caught fish and goofed around with them on camera. The feds are involved because we have nothing better to do apparently. Border agents got defunded for years, fentanyl came through by the ton, and the FBI spent three years chasing a Russia collusion fairy tale but NOAA enforcement is out here building a case file on a dude who body-slammed a mako. Priorities in this country are completely inverted. Illegal take means he was over his limit or out of season, fine, write him a ticket. The wrestling videos are dumb, not a federal matter.
The shark population point is worth taking seriously though. Makos are overfished and slow to recover. Federal jurisdiction over marine wildlife isn't some bureaucratic overreach, it's literally the only way to manage a resource that doesn't respect state lines or national borders.
I get the frustration about misaligned enforcement priorities, and some of it is fair. But "they got the Russia thing wrong therefore NOAA shouldn't exist" is a logical leap. Wildlife regs predate all of that by decades.
Write him a ticket, sure. But acting like federal marine enforcement is inherently illegitimate because Comey was bad at his job is its own kind of inverted logic.
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Wonder what kind of pressure the agencies were putting on him to get these videos out. Fishing violations usually aren't this high on the FBI's priority list, unless there's more to it. 😉