Additional second chance promotion offers players the chance to win the fishing trip of a lifetime!
WEST PALM BEACH —The Palm Beach International Boat Show got off to a lucky start Thursday with the announcement of a brand new Florida Lottery GUY HARVEY® Scratch-Off game. Fishing and boating enthusiasts in Florida regularly wear Guy Harvey sportswear and starting on April 3, they can try their luck with this new game.
Capturing the colorful wildlife illustrations created by Dr. Guy Harvey, the $2 Scratch-Off game will feature six scenes of original Guy Harvey® Collector’s Series artwork.
“Today was a fun day to launch this new product that Floridians and visitors can really feel good about purchasing,” said Florida Lottery Secretary Cynthia O’Connell. “Not only do we expect this ticket to generate about $3.5 million for Florida’s education system, Dr. Harvey is also donating his licensing fee to the Guy Harvey Ocean Fund, a non-profit organization that directly benefits Florida’s coastlines.”
The $2 GUY HARVEY® Scratch-Off game offers cash prizes of up to $30,000 and overall odds to win of one-in-4.37. Additionally, non-winning GUY HARVEY® tickets may be entered in the Guy Harvey® Sportsman’s Paradise Second Chance Promotion on the Lottery’s website.
Four drawings will be held between April 25 and June 27 with 12 winners selected in each drawing.
• Grand prize winners will receive a Sportsman’s Paradise fishing trip for two to one of several fantastic fishing destinations including St. Petersburg Beach, Duck Key, the Bahamas, or Grand Cayman Island, where one lucky winner and a guest will get the opportunity of a lifetime – to go fishing with Guy Harvey himself!
• Second prize winners in the drawing will receive an original Guy Harvey® framed watercolor painting and the third prize winners will receive a $200 gift certificate to GuyHarveySportswear.com.
“This partnership with the Florida Lottery is unique and I am happy to be here in Florida to launch a product that will help Florida’s schools as well as the state’s precious natural resources,” said Dr. Guy Harvey. “I am especially looking forward to fishing with the winner of the Grand Cayman trip. We will have a great time!”
The Florida Lottery is working closely with the Florida Fish & Wildlife Conservation Commission to promote the game to Florida’s licensed anglers and to help underscore the importance of conservation to Florida.
“Acknowledged as the ‘Fishing Capital of the World,’ Florida has vast natural resources we are duty-bound to protect,” said Chuck Collins, Regional Director of the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. “Every effort to highlight the beauty of our waters, the abundance of species and our need to respect and conserve them for residents, visitors and our future generations is a worthwhile effort.”
For a complete list of our other featured blog posts and to see the full line of Guy Harvey Sportswear, please visit:www.guyharveysportswear.com
In recent years the Indo-Pacific lionfish has spread from the SE coast of the USA throughout the Bahamas and Caribbean as far north as Bermuda and as far south as Venezuela. They can reduce the populations of native fish species very rapidly particularly by preying upon juveniles and reducing recruitment of all species to the reef habitat.
There are several examples of humans causing the substantial invasion of a (non native) species that thrives extremely well in its new habitat. In short order, this species explodes in biomass because of the lack of natural predators in that new environment and a food source that does recognize the invader as a predator. But none have had the dramatic (possibly immeasurable) damaging effect that the lionfish has had on Caribbean and western Atlantic native fish populations.
The spread of Lionfish in the Bahamas and Caribbean is problematic for native species
In response to the invasion of lionfish around the reefs of the Cayman Islands the Department of Environment now offers lionfish culling courses and licenses the use of Hawaiian slings to assist in capture and killing these fish. Being a small country with a low population but many of whom dive, fish or both, the culling of lionfish has become a weekly operation. Many restaurants are now offering lionfish on their menus.
Several dive companies have one day per week set aside for hunting lionfish, particularly in Little Cayman, the diving crown jewel of these islands. A study on the effectiveness of this culling is being undertaken by the Central Caribbean Marine Institute, (CCMI) which is based on the north side of Little Cayman. Following the Wednesday culling dives, researchers are measuring the catch per unit effort needed to make a dent in the population and cover the 3 mile stretch of wall at Bloody Bay to determine how fast new lionfish colonize the vacated areas. They are also assessing whether the structure and balance of Bloody Bay’s native fish population is affected by the continuing targeted removal of lionfish.
The targeted removal of lionfish has several benefits. Firstly, they are good to eat, so in spearing lionfish rather than grouper, snapper or hogfish, this removes some fishing pressure on the more popular reef species and will help reduce the mortality of juvenile reef fish caused by the invasive lionfish. The removal of significant numbers of larger lionfish means that those remaining are unable to prey upon larger individuals of the resident native fish populations.
Perhaps the best way to get people involved is to hold a lionfish culling tournament. There is the educational component when you register for the event, then the challenge of getting the most, the biggest (or smallest) and the creation of a tournament atmosphere while relieving the reefs of a very dangerous predator.
In a meeting with the Minister of the Environment last week, I learned of the plan to have a specialized task force assigned to culling lionfish around the Cayman Islands. I agree with this move. The threat to the coral reef habitat is so great that there needs to be radical action taken. The individual dive operators should not have to do the all grunt work on their own. After all, the dive business in the Cayman Islands is the focal point of the tourism sector.
Little Cayman also has the largest remaining population of Nassau groupers. This species, which is a favourite of divers and is the iconic Caribbean reef predator, may now have a new role in reef fish population restoration. Nassau groupers routinely follow divers and will consume lionfish speared by divers. Some divers say that Nassau groupers lead them to lionfish a bit like trained hunting dogs. For decades the Nassau groupers were traditionally fished heavily by artisanal fishermen at their spawning sites (locally called “grouper holes”) over the winter full moons. The Marine Conservation Board here protected these sites from 2003, and has just renewed that protection for another eight years. Good job! The Nassau grouper might be the knight in shining armour for reef fish populations. If this grouper, along with other large groupers and mutton snappers, can learn to attack and consume lionfish without the aid of divers then natural controls will begin to take effect in reducing lionfish biomass. After all, in the western Pacific and Indian Ocean, lionfish populations are maintained at equilibrium by their natural predators such as large groupers, jacks and the white tip reef shark.
— Guy Harvey
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FORT LAUDERDALE, FL—JANUARY 9, 2012— Internationally known wildlife artist and conservationist Dr. Guy Harvey, who took audiences across the planet in the award-winning Portraits from the Deep documentary series, is launching several new film projects in 2012, starting with Panama Paradise: Edge of Conservation due for release this spring.
“A critical part of the mission of the Guy Harvey Ocean Foundation is education and film is a superb way to deliver the messages of science and conservation,” said Dr. Harvey. “Only through understanding the issues can we hope to save our seas for future generations.”
In Panama Paradise: Edge of Conservation, Dr. Harvey and two-time Emmy Award winning producer George C. Schellenger takes the audience on an expedition where the jungle meets the sea in an explosion of life, an unforgettable vision of Panama and its surrounding waters. The film will show how scientists are working against the clock to protect a land and sea paradise that attracts visitors from around the world.
“The film will feature massive storms, majestic marlins and even protective dolphins—all part of an adventure that takes place above and below the water,” said Dr. Harvey, whose latest documentary “The Mystery of the Grouper Moon” played a pivotal role in protecting one of the last know spawning areas of the Nassau grouper. An updated version of the documentary is in production. Also, a film revealing scientific breakthroughs in the study of migration patterns of satellite-tagged Tiger Sharks is underway for a 2012 release.
Dr. Harvey and Schellenger have collaborated on several projects recently, including “This is Your Ocean: Sharks”, a 44-minute documentary depicting sharks in their natural environment. This film captures the adventure and passion of shark diving and evokes a call for conservation and protection for the species that today is threatened by over fishing for a growing demand for shark fin soup.
Trailer for “Panama Paradise: Edge of Conservation”:
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Every time I go for a dive in the Cayman Islands I am always on the lookout for the most beautiful of all Caribbean reef fishes, the queen angelfish. If followed too closely, they sneak into a hole and then turn to look at you, but never give you a good profile shot. However, I know that they feed a great deal on sponges, and occasionally you can be lucky and find a hawksbill turtle chowing down on a sponge at a reasonable depth giving you decent bottom time. The turtle is a sloppy eater and there are lots of loose pieces of sponge and scraps to be had, a perfect size for the angelfish’s small mouth.
Queen angelfish are also present at cleaning stations, particularly the juveniles,and will clean parasites off larger predators like groupers and jacks. In the tropical eastern Pacific, a close relative, the king angelfish will be a major player at cleaning stations and along with the barberfish (a butterflyfish species) will cover scalloped hammerheads as they come close to the stations to be cleaned. In such exotic locations as Cocos Island and in the Galapagos, these angelfish form large schools and the sight of them cleaning a large shark is quite a spectacle.
Apart from sponges, the queen angels consume a wide variety of tiny invertebrates, soft corals and tunicates in their normal depth range from the shallows down to one hundred meters. Their mouths are protractible and have fine, brush-like teeth. Typically, one finds them slowly browsing along the reef picking at minute bits of coral tissue, and invertebrates that are lurking in crevices.
This species is found throughout the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico, to Bermuda, so may be considered sub tropical and tropical. By no means the largest of the angelfish species, they grow to a maximum of forty centimeters, and weigh just a couple of pounds. Because of its vivid blue and yellow colour, gorgeous face markings and unique shape, it is widely used to advertise dive shops and exotic dive destinations in numerous publications. Easily identifiable from a distance because of their flattened rhomboid shape and brilliant colours, the queen angelfish is truly the queen of the reef and a great subject for an underwater painting.
It is likely the angelfish has a protracted spawning season as pairs can stay together over many months. Other similar, but larger species, such as the gray angel and French angel, may pair for life. Following spawning, as with most tropical species, eggs hatch within twenty four hours and the larvae are planktonic, feeding and growing rapidly and then settling on a new coral reef habitat as juveniles. They are protective of their patch of reef and often engage in cleaning other fish and rays. The colouration of juvenile is different from the adult, but just as spectacular and combined in the same image make a wonderful work of art.
Queen angelfish are long lived and may be encountered in the same reef for many years. They are common but not abundant having few predators. Only man has exploited them to any great extent. For defense, they rely on their ability to fit into crevices in the coral to evade predators. Also, they have two very large backward facing spines on their pre-operculum, which they use to good effect with violent head shakes when held. In some Caribbean islands, they are harvested in fish traps or by spear fishing for food. In other locations, they are taken mostly as live animals for use in the aquarium trade but are not yet considered over exploited anywhere in their range.
So the next time you encounter a queen angel browsing along the reef, try to get the best shot ever of this magnificent creature while you wonder why it evolved with such striking markings and coloration.
It is our collective responsibility to conserve all marine creatures and maintain the biodiversity of this planet. Safe diving!
—Guy Harvey
For a complete list of our other featured blog posts and to see the full line of Guy Harvey Sportswear, please visit:www.guyharveysportswear.com
There are twenty species of barracuda in tropical waters around the planet, of which, the great barracuda is the largest. The IGFA all tackle world record is 85 pounds, but the largest recorded specimen was 106 pounds. Can you imagine meeting that guy on a dive! Large specimens are rare, and most of those caught in the Caribbean do not reach 40 pounds. The majority of barracudas that we see on dives here in the Cayman Islands are in the 5 to 15 pound size range.
The great barracuda is long, slim-bodied and has a pointed head, with a jutting lower jaw, full of canine teeth that give it a ferocious look. Their second dorsal fin and anal fin are set far back on their body, effectively giving them another tail, enabling them to accelerate very rapidly.
Barracuda have a jutting lower jaw, full of canine teeth that give them a ferocious look — Photo by Bill Boyce
They are tremendous fish to paint. They play the part of the reef bully, but are handsome at the same time, with gorgeous metallic hues, punctuated by irregular black blotches, that are striking from a distance. They can change colour by adopting a mottled or banded colour scheme when waiting motionless near the bottom or beside structure. Their large eye and menacing look tell the story of a successful reef predator.
Young individuals up to about 3 pounds usually live close to shore in the shallow water, and are found in coastal lagoons, harbours and mangroves flats. Growth rates are fast, but little is known about reproduction in this species. Large adults may occur farther offshore along the reef edges and even out in the open ocean. They are aggressive carnivorous fish, and are an underrated game fish. Larger barracudas are usually caught by anglers trolling along reef drop-offs on heavy tackle targeting other species such as wahoo and tuna. However, when specifically sought on the inshore flats by anglers in shallow water, also looking for bonefish and permit, the great barracuda can be a spectacular game fish making swift runs and frequent jumps.
People who eat barracuda and other large reef fish do run the risk of ciguatera poisoning. The symptoms are varied usually include gastrointestinal and neurological disorders, which can last for weeks and sometimes years. There is no effective treatment for ciguatera poisoning.
However, there is a very low incidence of fish poisoning from eating barracuda in Jamaica and the Cayman Islands. Part of the reason is that they are regularly consumed, so big ones, over 15 # are rare (compared to the Bahamas for example).
Ciguatera toxins are produced by dinoflagellates which herbivorous fish consume. These fish are then eaten by large predatory reef fish, such as grouper, amberjack and barracuda, which appear to be unharmed by the toxin. Because the toxins are lipid-soluble, they accumulate through the food chain. The toxin may be more concentrated in the head, viscera and roe.
Ciguatoxin-containing fish may be highly localized and islands may have some reefs where the fish are inedible, and other reefs where the fish are unaffected. No open ocean fish, such as wahoo, tuna and dolphin have been found to carry ciguatoxin.
Ciguatoxins are odourless, colourless, tasteless, and unaffected by cooking or freezing, therefore persons living or traveling to areas where ciguatera toxin is endemic should follow these general precautions:
1) Avoid consuming large predatory reef fish, especially barracuda.
2) Avoid eating the head, viscera or roe of any reef fish.
3) Avoid eating fish from areas with known ciguatera toxins.
In the Caribbean there are many beliefs about how a poisonous barracuda can be identified, by its size, the colour of its teeth, rigidity of its scales, or by putting some of its meat on an ant’s nest, or its flesh turning a silver coin black. My grandfather used to give the head to his cook to make “fish tea”, and if she was around the following day, he would have the barracuda steamed for lunch! Very brave of him!
The dubious food value of the barracuda in no way detracts from its game qualities. The message of this story is that if you are in doubt, then release the barracuda alive. Nowadays, there are dehooking devices available that enable you to release a barracuda or any fish, without taking it out of the water or risking injury to one self.
As an ardent diver, I look forward to the next barracuda encounter. I put their predictable curiosity towards swimmers and divers to good use by capturing head shots and close-ups as they come by to check you out. Frequently, they are accompanied by a group of bar jacks, or as we experience at Tarpon Alley in Grand Cayman, they hang out around the tarpon and schools of horse-eye jacks.
It is our collective responsibility to conserve the marine environment and maintain the biodiversity of the planet.
Fish responsibly, dive safely.
—Guy Harvey
For a complete list of our other featured blog posts and to see the full line of Guy Harvey Sportswear, please visit:www.guyharveysportswear.com
Stalking a bonefish school takes patience and persistence, but the result can be very gratifying in serene surroundings
Yeehaw! Line was pouring off the small spinning reel, and the rod tip was bucking as the fish took off toward deeper water. I had a bite and was tight to a reasonable sized bonefish. The fish took out a hundred yards of line in the blink of an eye and then turned right, so I waded quickly along in the shallow water near the beach to catch up with the fish, before it emptied the reel. In a matter of minutes, I had the bonefish doing circles around me, and I bent down and grabbed the short leader to hold the fish and remove the hook. I released a fine specimen of a Grand Cayman bonefish about five pounds.
Bonefish are found all around the tropics, even in the remote oceanic islands. Wherever they are found, they are a big draw for recreational anglers. For some islands, such as in the Bahamas, bonefish (and other shallow water game fish such as permit and tarpon) fishing excursions provide a major source of income for locals. It is likely that if diving was not such a developed eco-business here, there would be a lot more emphasis on the bonefish and tarpon fishing that these islands have to offer.
The bonefish has an elongated, torpedo shaped body with a slender head and a small, inferior mouth inserted under a pig-like snout. The single dorsal fin is placed in the middle of the body, and the large tail is deeply forked. The back is dark green, and sides are lined with shiny scales that reflect the color of the surrounding flats. The face looks as if it’s made from beaten stainless steel plates. This is a species I love to paint, but they are a big challenge, not only because of the detail and serial repetition of the scales, but also because the light playing on their back and the added detail in their shallow water habitat.
My good friend Billy Boyce holds up a big bonefish caught on one of the many sand flats surrounding the Bahamas
The bonefish is primarily a shallow water species, and is a very wary fish. They are so wary that many anglers claim that bonefish live in a constant state of alarm. Its habitat, for angling purposes, is the flats or intertidal areas adjacent to sand and coral islands or mainland beaches. Bonefish invade tidal flats on an incoming tide and feed on buried crustaceans, mollusks and small fish. They often travel in large schools and can be spotted from a distance because of the clouds of sand or silt they stir up. If the water is very shallow, their tails will stick out above the surface while they dig in the substrate with their pointed snouts which is called “tailing” and “mudding” in angling parlance. They will accompany stingrays and spotted eagle rays as they dig around the substrate looking for food items. Bar jacks also accompany the rays for the same reason. Bonefish may be accompanied by permit, small tarpon, small cobia and other species of jacks while they cross the sand flats.
Little is known about the life cycle of the bonefish. The egg hatches into a large leptocephalus which is transported by tides and currents into the open ocean. It metamorphoses from this 3-inch transparent eel-like larvae which gradually shrinks in size while it is transported by ocean currents away from the spawning area and hence to populate other locations. When this reverse growth is complete, a tiny bonefish is formed, and from then it wears chrome-plated scales and grows to twenty pounds. The average size varies according to the area in which they grow up, but 4 to 6 pounds is the average size.
A new tagging study on bonefish migration is testing a hypothesis that bonefish from Florida cross the Gulf Stream to the Bahamas, and then return. Tagged bonefish have been known to make coastal migrations and new evidence may soon emerge about deep water transits, which by extrapolation, would then suggest that bonefish could move between the three Cayman Islands.
Got some time on your hands and a good weather day? Then grab the fly rod, or the spinning rod, and some conch, cockles or shrimp for bait and head out to Frank Sound, South Sound or Barkers, and spend some time getting close to nature. Stalking a bonefish school takes patience and persistence but the result can be very gratifying in serene surroundings. Tight lines!
— Guy Harvey
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Giant Bluefin tuna are the largest tuna species in the oceans and can attain weights over 1500lbs. Photo by Bill Boyce
The cold clear green water got my heart started as I turned to face the oncoming fish. I saw the first one rise out of the green abyss, gliding, silent and purposeful, eyes wide, mouth slightly agape, the dorsal fin suddenly raised, pelvics lowered and the gills flared as the fish inhaled a slowing sinking herring. It turned sharply and the afternoon sun caught its bronze flanks and the water around the fish was momentarily lit in a golden glow. The fins and tail cut the surface and the bubble stream followed the fish down into the green depths. Then another one rose up and another and then several came in a rush to suck down the drifting herring…..one came so close I could see the scale detail on its cheek and it popped its gills the size of trash can lid. Then a blur of bright yellow finlets as the huge fish passes. The average size of these giant bluefin tuna is 800 pounds. Giants… is the correct terminology. These fish are up to 12 feet long with a 7 foot girth and several that swept by me were in the 1,200 pound range. I panned my video camera on them as they swam past me gobbling up the chum that kept them close to the boat.
In the late summer and fall these remnants of a once larger population of bluefin tuna take advantage of large schools of herring spawning in the Gulf of St. Lawrence and around Nova Scotia, Canada. They put on weight prior to undertaking lengthy migrations south to the Gulf of Mexico or swim across the Atlantic to the Mediterranean.
I was on board the “Fin Seeker”, a 50 foot lobster boat from Wedgeport, owned by Eric Jaquard and crewed by sons Joel and Camille who had a permit to take 5,000 pounds of bluefin this season. Eric was very selective about what tunas were taken (only five in six days of fishing) and the rest were all tagged and released for science. Those fish that were harvested were meticulously cleaned and iced down before being shipped by air to waiting markets in Japan.
There are two research efforts currently under way in Nova Scotia, one being conducted by Dr. Barbara Block of the Tuna Research and Conservation Centre, based at the Stanford University’s Hopkins Marine Station, please visit: http://tunaresearch.org/. The GHOF gives this research organization a small grant to assist with this effort which is based at Port Hood in the northern district of Cape Breton.
The other research effort is being conducted by Dr. Molly Lutcavage of the Large Pelagics Research Centre based at the Natural Resources Conservation Dept , University of Massachusetts Amherst, please visit: http://tunalab.org/. Dr. Lutcavage’s team were based in Wedgeport in the southwest. The plan was to visit both operations and conduct interviews with respective scientists and crew. Both teams have spent the last decade in the field tagging and tracking the migrations of the bluefin tuna along the eastern seaboard of North America and across the Atlantic to Europe.
Their results have indicated main feeding areas, spawning areas, trans-Atlantic migrations and have assisted in the sometimes controversial management of this species by ICCAT, the international organization that allocates quotas and attempts to regulate commercial fishing for this valuable nomad of the ocean.
This is not my first brush with giants. In January 2003, I did a shoot with Barbara Block off Cape Lookout, North Carolina while she was tagging medium sized and giant bluefin tuna, for my TV series “Portraits from the Deep”. “Giants” are individual tuna that are over 315 pounds and this species grows to at least 1,500 pounds. The previous year I had visited the tuna traps or “almadraba” in Tarifa and in Barbate on the southern coast of Spain. Here I dived with the captive tunas caught in land based traps and witnessed the harvest of 300 giants in a 2000 year old ritual that began with the Phoenecians and then the Romans.
Guy Harvey is working on a Bluefin Tuna Documentary
Long before the species became desirable food, the bluefin tuna was fished by recreational anglers out of Wedgeport, Nova Scotia from 1935 until 1975 in a famous tournament called the Sharp Cup which attracted international teams from many countries. Of these large, powerful animals Charles F. Holder said “Weight for weight, they have double the fighting power of a tarpon. They are living meteors that strike like whirlwind and play like a storm”. Some say the recreational fishery, catch and release only, should be revived in Nova Scotia.
In the early years this species was fished sparingly by harpoon, some were caught on line for canning as they were more of a “nuisance fish” damaging gear set for herring and mackerel. In the mid 1970s demand in Japan for the fresh tuna grew exponentially and so fishing effort for bluefin tuna was greatly increased. Industrial scale long lining and purse seining were added to the traps and harpoon fishery so the populations of bluefin tuna declined to the present day levels where some authorities consider the species close to commercial extinction. However, the researchers are of the opinion that if the quota system is properly regulated (as it certainly appears to be in Canada) then this fishery has the potential to be sustainable in spite of the huge worldwide demand for bluefin tuna sushi.
Along with my documentary producer and camera man, George Schellenger, I spent three days with the crew of the “Fin Seeker” as willing anglers using ultra heavy tackle caught, tagged and released some two dozen giants. Pop-up archival tags were deployed on many fish following capture. The hook was removed using a de-hooking device and the tunas swam free. The PATs record the migration of the tunas as well as depth and temperature data along their routes. A special physiological adaptation called a counter current heat exchanger allows metabolic heat to be kept in the body and not lost through the gills thus maintaining the body temperature well above ambient temperatures, allowing faster swimming speeds in areas rich in prey species. Being “warm blooded” these giant tuna, often called “super fish”, can penetrate the cold northern latitudes and dive to great depths in search of fish and squid.
The winter is coming soon and bad weather arrived so I was unable to visit the Tag–a-Giant research team in Cape Breton. They will be back next year and I will complete the documentary shoot with them at that time. Meanwhile, I will be completing the story of the life cycle of the bluefin tuna including interviews with other research efforts to study aspects of the early life history of this long lived super fish.
What a thrill to spend an hour in the water with these magnificent creatures and to capture their brilliant colours and movement for my next work. These are big fish and I will need to prepare a big canvas. The adventure continues….
It is our collective responsibility to conserve the marine environment and maintain the biodiversity of the planet.
—Guy Harvey
For a complete list of our other featured blog posts and to see the full line of Guy Harvey Sportswear, please visit:www.guyharveysportswear.com
I was four hundred miles west of Grand Cayman, on the continental shelf just to the east of Isla Mujeres, Mexico looking for bait balls of sardines with sailfish feeding on them, while shooting an episode of my TV show “Portraits from the Deep”. Frigates birds circling over the bait will normally announce the presence of sailfish, but just a hundred yards ahead of the boat, I spotted a frothy commotion. Big splashes and the tips of large fins broke the surface sending up volumes of white water. It looked like a sea monster was about to erupt from the surface as we quickly motored on over to see what was happening.
It seemed that two large manta rays were chasing an even bigger manta ray. I jumped in the water, camera in hand and finned hard toward the group of animals that were doing circles in front of me, tearing up the surface in their frantic efforts to keep up the chase. The large female turned directly at me, and with great beats of her twenty foot wings she came head on and swept just a foot beneath me, as I sucked in my stomach to make room for her passing. The two males in ardent pursuit also went by below me. I swiveled to continue the sequence and then she angled her left wing down and dived like a fighter jet, and went out of sight, with the two suitors in hot pursuit. It was two fourteen foot males trying to entice a twenty foot female to mate, but she was having nothing to do with them!
In the Atlantic Ocean manta rays are found in areas with a high concentration of plankton, such as in the western Caribbean off the coast of Mexico and Belize, and in the southern Caribbean off Venezuela, in the same areas frequented by whale sharks
Manta rays are different from all other pelagic rays in that they have two large fleshy lobes, called cephalic limbs on their head, that look like horns, hence the other name given to them , “Devil Ray”. These are actually paddle like in shape and while the ray is feeding with its large terminal mouth wide open they help guide food into the open mouth while swimming forward, often at great speed. In Mexico and Coats Rica, I have seen them attack schools of balled up sardines with rapid lunges and great determination.
When swimming along these horns are rolled up neatly for streamlining. Their coloration is generally dark brown or black on the upper surface, white on the lower surface, with a number of irregular black blotches. Sometimes there is more black than white on the underside. There may be areas of white streaks on the upper side, and sometimes the tips of their magnificent wings have white. Each animal is distinct and different. The smaller related species, the Devil Ray has a brown or even tan upper surface. Their tails are thin but generally quite long
Guy's first hand observation of Manta Ray's has inspired the artwork depicted on this t-shirt from his sportswear collection
A set of gill rakers on their gill bars catches all the microscopic organisms in the same way for other large plankton feeders such as whale sharks, and basking sharks.
Little is known about growth rates and their life history. Opportunities for study have come about recently because of their ability to survive in captivity in large aquaria such as at the Georgia Aquarium, and at Atlantis in Nassau, Bahamas. Mantas are reported up to twenty five feet across, weighing three tons. They probably reach maturity at a large size, and are long lived animals as are all the other large cartilaginous fishes, the sharks and rays. They give birth to fully formed miniatures of themselves that weigh up to thirty pounds.
Adult mantas have few natural predators, such as large sharks and orcas, but most are killed by humans, some are caught in gill nets or harpooned for food as seen on the Pacific coast of Mexico and the Orient, and many are taken as by-catch on long lines set for tunas and swordfish. Oh yes, a manta will eat a bait on a line. I caught and released a couple in Costa Rica while live baiting for black marlin. I have cut off and set free many mantas hooked on long lines in the eastern Pacific. Many mantas are caught in purse seines set on flotsam in the yellowfin tuna and big-eye tuna fishery in the tropical eastern Pacific.
As with most large oceanic animals manta rays are overexploited wherever they occur. However their popularity in certain islands frequented by divers is their saving grace in such accessible locations. Given the choice of seeing a huge manta glide by on twenty foot wings or see it cut up in pieces on an Asian dock, I think most people would choose the former. It is our collective responsibility to conserve the marine environment and protect the biodiversity of our planet.
Good fishing, safe diving.
—Guy Harvey
For a complete list of our other
featured blog posts and to see the full line of Guy Harvey Sportswear, please
visit:www.guyharveysportswear.com
Guy Harvey art supports efforts to the IGFA and NCMC in their "Take Marlin Off the Menu" effort
Marlin populations throughout the world are being wiped out by commercial overfishing. Concerned about the health of billfish fisheries, the IGFA and the National Coalition for Marine Conservation joined forces in 2008 to create the “Take Marlin off the Menu” campaign. In just two short years, the campaign gained the support of such luminaries as Wolfgang Puck and the Wegmans Supermarket chain – as well as the attention of U.S. policymakers. Their support hinged largely on an Economic Analysis of International Billfish Markets which shows that the economic value of the U.S. billfish trade is almost nil in relation to the rest of the U.S. commercial fishing industry.
This new marlin artwork from Guy Harvey was created to support this important effort. It is currently illegal to harvest or import Atlantic-caught billfish into the U.S., but fish caught in the Pacific Ocean flood into U.S. markets in substantial numbers, threatening the survival of these fisheries. The Billfish Conservation Act of 2011 (S. 1451 and H.R. 2706), introduced into Congress on July 29, would close U.S. commercial markets to Pacific billfish, preventing their sale and importation (excluding Hawaii and Pacific Insular Island Area). In short, this important bipartisan legislation will help restore billfish populations and improve recreational fishing opportunities while concurrently creating jobs and other economic benefits.
Your support of the Billfish Conservation Act would close the U.S. to commercial billfish harvest, importation and sale. It would have a negligible impact on the commercial industry in the U.S. while helping increase the abundance of these important apex predators as well as the value of the recreational fishery, which brings in billions of dollars annually but has a minimal impact on billfish populations.
To learn how you can help support this important Take Marlin off the Menu effort please contact the IGFA at www.IGFA.org or NCMC www.savethefish.org
— Bill
For a complete list of our other featured blog posts and to see the full line of Guy Harvey Sportswear, please visit:www.guyharveysportswear.com
Responding to last week’s announcement from the Government of the Bahamas that it will prohibit all commercial shark fishing in its more than 240,000 square miles of territorial water, Dr. Harvey commented: “I am very impressed and pleased that the Government of the Bahamas has taken the necessary and correct step to further protect its marine resources from over-exploitation by both local and foreign interests. This new legislation compliments the ban on commercial long line fishing enacted 20 years ago. The ban on commercial shark fishing and exportation by shark by-products is a huge step in the conservation of sharks worldwide.”
Through the Bahamas National Trust (BNT), Dr. Harvey met with government officials last March to add his voice and influence as a highly respected conservationist to call for strict regulations to ban the commercial fishing of all sharks in The Bahamas, an archipelago of 700 islands sweeping across 500 miles of open ocean. The Bahamas is the fourth country to ban shark fishing after Honduras, the Maldives and Palau. Estimates are that more than 70 million sharks are killed annually around the world.
One of the premier shark-watching destinations for divers, reeling in $800 million over the past 20 years for the Bahamian national economy, sharks, according to Dr. Harvey, were worth much more alive than dead.
“Many countries have seen their populations of sharks annihilated by commercial over-exploitation,” said Dr. Harvey. “Research has shown that shark populations do not recover. Other countries will take encouragement from the Bahamas’ very bold move. They are realizing, very quickly, the value of the living shark in maintaining the health of reef ecosystems. In addition, the economic value of a living shark to ecotourism is now widely accepted as a sustainable and non-consumptive use of a marine resource with many additional benefits to respective island nations.”
Last year, following news that a Bahamian seafood company was considering exporting sharks to the Far East, the BNT along with the U.S. based Pew Environmental Group and individual conservationists, such as Dr. Guy Harvey, who created a “Protect Bahamian Sharks” campaign logo and poster, initiated a petition drive to force the issue of banning commercial shark-fishing. The government upon receiving a petition signed by 5,000 Bahamian residents acted this week to protect the some 40 sharks species found in Bahamian waters.
With shark populations around the world continuing to spiral downward, marine scientists such as Dr. Guy Harvey, are working around the clock to give these magnificent animals a fighting chance for survival. Dr. Harvey is also seeding cultural change in the structure of shark fishing tournaments to creating Catch and Release divisions.
Last month, he brought his cause into the epicenter of one of the nation’s oldest and largest shark fishing tournaments in Ocean City, Maryland. Thanks in part to his efforts and a willingness to continue to adapt by the tournament founders and organizers, The Ocean City Shark Tournament’s cash and prize package payment in the catch and release division increased to over $15,000.
In May, the Second Annual Guy Harvey Ultimate Shark Challenge, a catch and release only tournament, was held on the West Coast of Florida in Punta Gorda. The tournament, created as a model for catch and release only shark tournament formats, drew some 3,000 competitors and spectators and paid out over $15,000 in cash and prizes.
In related shark conservation activity, Dr. Harvey offered his artistic talent and foundation sponsorship funding in support of the recent Circle Hook Symposium held in Miami. The symposium, hosted by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), is an international gathering of scientists, resource managers and constituents convening to discuss the performance and use of circle hooks in commercial, recreational and artisanal fisheries. While it is legal to use a J-hook to fish for sharks, experts such as Dr. Harvey recommend using a circle hook, where the barb points inward and not outward.
The oceans just got a little safer for sharks, and conservationist, artist and scientist —Guy Harvey couldn’t be more pleased.
For a complete list of our other featured blog posts and to see the full line of Guy Harvey Sportswear with a varied selection of shirts with fish, please visit:www.guyharveysportswear.com
I would like to welcome you to the Guy Harvey Sportswear web site. Here we will feature my blog where I will report on expeditions, adventures, and various marine conservation efforts. We will also include various guest bloggers, videos and photos that I believe you will find interesting, whether you are a serious fishing or diving enthusiast, or simply someone who cares about the marine resource, loves living the coastal lifestyle, or just wants to learn more about Guy Harvey sportswear.
Additional second chance promotion offers players the chance to win the fishing trip of a lifetime!
I would like to welcome you to the Guy Harvey Sportswear web site. Here we will feature my blog where I will report on expeditions, adventures, and various marine conservation efforts. We will also include various guest bloggers, videos and photos that I believe you will find interesting, whether you are a serious fishing or diving enthusiast, or simply someone who cares about the marine resource, loves living the coastal lifestyle, or just wants to learn more about Guy Harvey sportswear.
