The Briton Ian Atherton found a nearly four meter long sawfish during a trip off the coast of Florida – a really extraordinary find.
The 57-year-old is vacationing in Florida with his family. One morning the family man wants to go out to sea to catch a shark.
Shark fishing is legal in Florida and a popular sport for vacationers. Several charter boat clubs offer tourists the opportunity to catch the “big fish”. However, according to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, a permit is required to capture the animals. The different shark species that may be caught or are under protection are also listed there. The statement that each person with a permit may catch one shark per day catches the eye. Studies have shown that many people still catch sharks illegally. In particular, the regulations surrounding state waters are a gray area, as they allow people to sail into federal waters to catch the animals there.
According to “LancsLive”, Ian also wanted to have this experience and went out on the Atlantic with the charter club “Fin and Fly”. After a while something bites:
“At first I thought it was a stingray, but after struggling with the thing for almost an hour, I saw its large rostrum sticking out of the water.”
It was only after some time that Ian realized it was a sawfish – a very rare animal listed as “Critically Endangered” globally on the IUCN Red List. But why are sawfish so rare to find?
According to the German Nature Conservation Union, sawfish are among the most endangered plate gills, also known as shark and ray-like species, in the world.
This is due to the low reproduction rate of the animals. This makes them particularly sensitive to heavy fishing, because sawfish are easy to catch, despite their upper jaw extension. They also easily get tangled up in nets. Many sawfish also end up in fishermen’s nets as by-catch. They rarely release the animals again because they represent a high economic value. In addition to fishing, the change in habitat also plays a role in the extinction of the sawfish.
Sawfish are therefore very rare to find and endangered. After the group around Ian realized that it was a sawfish, they let it out of the net again.