I have witnessed shark finning in Florida.

I enjoy fishing, but never have fished for sharks. Not my thing. I like to fish for stuff like snook, redfish, snapper, grouper, etc. More sustainable, and abundant fish. I rarely ever keep anything. Always catch & release for me. I also love to scuba dive. Never seen a shark though.

One night while fishing at the Ballast Point Pier that sticks out into Tampa Bay in South Tampa, Florida, I saw somebody catch a small blacktip shark that really wasn't much bigger than a large trout. The woman who caught it, a complete white-trash redneck, whipped out a knife, and cut off the sharks tale, right in front of her little white-trash redneck kids. Blood spilled all over the pier, and then she took the shark, put it on a stringer, still live, and put it back into the water to use the blood to attract more sharks. Needless to say, this is highly illegal. And seeing this in person appalled me.

I wish I had the courage to say something. To confront this woman. But I was alone, and there were a lot of people with this woman. So I didn't feel comfortable, or even safe in doing so. Disgusted, I left the pier, stopped fishing, and drove home.

The next day, I called the local office of the Florida Fish & Game Department to report what I witnessed. They thanked me for my call, and gave me the standard response that they would check into it, but without any evidence or names, there wasn't a whole lot they could do.

I saw Sharkwater on Saturday night, and it reminded me of that night. And really angered me all over again. I want to get more involved than ever in stopping the killing of sharks by fisherman here in Florida.