For the longest time after the 1975 blockbuster “JAWS” gave us a spine-tingling ride, there was an often used saying that “the only good shark is a dead shark”. This man- against-beast thriller and its many progeny shark horror flicks still pervade the public’s psyche, anointing all sharks as human-eaters and keeping many beach-goers out of the ocean.
The public and media’s morbid fascination with sharks as killing “machines” continues today. There is a steady stream of media coverage when fishers catch and drag back a large shark for photo-ops. In some minds, catching and killing a large shark is almost heroic and fashionable, and a testament to man’s superiority in the “battle” against the beast.
Meanwhile, the enormous toll taken on shark numbers worldwide due to indiscriminate fisheries continues unabated. All this shark killing causes some to wring their hands in anguish about longer-term ecological impacts. Others say “what’s the big deal if sharks are killed?”
Who’s right? Should we care if many of the oceans large sharks are exterminated? Is there really enough of an impact on the marine environment to worry about?
New studies show that sharks also influence the behavior of their prey. Photo credit: B. Watts
It seems intuitively reasonable that sharks, as top-level predators, play an important role in maintaining stability in the ocean’s food chain. Most people objectively or “in their gut” understand that life on earth is a series of complex interactions, with connections through food webs. Simply put, species at the top of the food chain eat species in the middle of the food chain which in turn eat species on the bottom of the food chain. And therefore, changes in the abundance of one community segment will affect the other segments. In fact, recent studies have indeed documented that overfishing of large sharks (the apex predators) has resulted in numerical increases in populations of their normal prey such as smaller sharks and rays (known as mid-level predators or mesopredators) in a phenomenon called “predator release”. In turn, the mesopredators are overeating their own smaller prey such as bay scallops and bony fishes even lower on the food chain. Scientists call such effects that ripple down the food chain “trophic cascades”.
Still, will it really matter all that much if we overfish sharks? Won’t some other large predatory species, such as billfish and barracuda, take over for sharks at the top of the food chain and keep the food webs functioning normally?
If only the interconnections of life were that simple…….
New studies in Shark Bay, Australia by Dr. Mike Heithaus and his team at Florida International University are showing that in addition to playing important roles in the food web by direct predation (or lethal) effects, including keeping prey population sizes in check, sharks also play a large role in maintaining the normal functioning of marine ecosystems by— get this— influencing the behavior of their prey!
How does this prey behavior to ecosystem function connection work?
Let’s take the seagrass ecosystem as an example. Recreational fishers and patrons of the marine outdoors know that seagrass beds are critically important nursery areas for juveniles and sometimes even adults of all types of fishes and invertebrates. The health of seagrass ecosystems is woven into an intricate balance with larger animals such as sea-cows, sea turtles and birds that obtain their sustenance in seagrass beds, either by directly grazing on the seagrass or eating smaller creatures living on the seagrass or in the surrounding sediment. These large animals (mesopredators) are in turn, prey for tiger sharks.
Let’s connect the ecosystem dots: Dr. Heithaus and colleagues have documented that sea-cows, sea turtles and birds avoid hanging out in seagrass beds when tiger sharks are seasonally present in Shark Bay, and jump right back in to devour their favorite foods after the sharks leave in winter. Makes survival sense doesn’t it? What this shows is that the presence of tiger sharks causes the mesopredators to change their habitat-use behavior to avoid the risk of being eaten. And this risk-avoidance behavior keeps the seagrass beds and their inhabitants from being over-consumed.
The take home message is that sharks keep the marine ecosystem in balance not just by directly eating their prey — the role that gets the most attention, but also indirectly by altering the behavior of their prey. The importance of this indirect ecosystem role of sharks is just beginning to be recognized.
We at the Guy Harvey Research Institute, Guy Harvey Ocean Foundation and AFTCO hope that you will keep in mind the delicate balance required to keep our oceans healthy. Please enjoy our marine environment with respect for all of its remarkable life forms. If you catch a shark, enjoy its magnificence, keep its important ecosystem role in mind – and let it swim away.
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
Shark populations around the world are being decimated by indiscriminate overfishing to supply the market demand for shark fin soup. These severe and rapid population reductions of the ocean’s apex predators have led to legitimate worries about disruptions to the delicate balance of marine ecosystems. The U.S. government, recognizing this looming environmental disaster, has made landings of 20 shark species deemed especially sensitive to overfishing illegal in U.S. Atlantic federal waters (see http://www.nmfs.noaa.gov/sfa/hms/Compliance_Guide/Comm/Comm_Compliance_Guide_QR_Sharks.pdf for list).
Shark "logs" Photo credit: M. Shivji, GHRI
Until recently, shark species were landed as processed carcasses or “logs”, i.e., in gutted form with their heads, tails and fins removed (see photo). The highly valuable, detached fins were kept separate from the carcasses. Since many sharks are difficult to identify even as intact animals, this processing practice made it extremely difficult to determine whether legal or illegal species were being landed. In fact, because of this species-identification difficulty, shark “finning” – the illegal practice where high value fins from some species (e.g., hammerhead, dusky, sandbar sharks) were landed without the corresponding carcasses, was commonplace. To prevent finning, new government regulations established in July 2008 require the fins of sharks landed in the U.S. Atlantic fisheries to be “naturally attached” to the carcass when landed – i.e., they can still be cut along most of their attachment point as long as they remain dangling from the carcass by a small piece of uncut skin. The cutting away of most of the fin is allowed so that the fishers can fold the fins back along the carcass to save on vessel storage space. The shark’s head, however, can still be removed at sea. Unfortunately, even with this new regulation, identifying the species landed by visual inspection only is still difficult for the non-expert. Furthermore, this new regulation does not yet apply to sharks landed in U.S. Pacific fisheries.
Confiscated Shark Fins. Photo credit: A. Samuels, NOAA OLE
To help management agencies detect landings of illegal shark species, scientists from the Guy Harvey Research Institute (GHRI) at Nova Southeastern University pioneered the development of a rapid DNA forensics test to accurately identify shark body parts (carcasses, fins, fillets) to species. This test has routinely been used since 2003 to help NOAA’s Office for Law Enforcement and international government agencies enforce their regulations pertaining to illegal fishing of protected shark species. The GHRI has assisted with over 20 such federal law enforcement cases, including one where the DNA analysis showed a U.S. fish dealer in illegal possession of fins from 19 great white sharks, a species considered by the IUCN (http://www.iucnredlist.org/apps/redlist/details/3855/0) at high risk for extinction in the wild. This case resulted in the fish dealer being assessed US $ 750,000 in fines!
The GHRI’s DNA forensic test has given fishery managers extra “teeth” to enforce regulations that, although well intentioned, were previously difficult to implement. We now have a powerful set of DNA-based, crime-fighting tools similar to those used in human criminal cases also being successfully applied in fish conservation and management. High-tech “Fisheries CSI” is now a reality! Ideas for a TV show, anyone?
In 2006, Dr. Shelley Clarke of Imperial College, UK, in collaboration with the Guy Harvey Research Institute at Nova Southeastern University in Florida conducted the first quantitative assessment of the number of sharks being killed by surveying fin markets. As part of this pioneering study, they estimated that 1.5 to 4 million hammerhead sharks are killed per year by commercial fishers just to satisfy the demands of the international fin trade! And these staggering figures are conservative because they only account for the three large hammerhead species (great, scalloped and smooth hammerheads) of the nine known species, and don’t include the many hammerheads killed that don’t end up in the fin markets. The actual number of hammerhead sharks killed worldwide is undoubtedly larger.
What accounts for this large-scale slaughter of one of the ocean’s most charismatic and evolutionarily distinctive creatures? It’s ironic that although hammerhead shark meat is considered of very low food quality in most commercial markets, their fins fetch amongst the highest prices in the world fin trade. Depending on the species, average wholesale prices for hammerhead shark fins range from U.S. $88-135 per kilogram of unprocessed fins – that’s 2-4 times more than the price of fresh tuna fillets in most U.S. grocery stores!
As you might imagine, this high market value for hammerhead shark fins has created enormous economic incentives to exploit them. The three large hammerhead species are distributed in tropical to temperate waters worldwide, and the absence of fisheries management by most nations, has resulted in their severe overfishing globally. The data shows that even in U.S waters where some management is practiced, hammerhead populations have declined over 80%! It makes the population status and future outlook for hammerheads in most parts of their range pretty dire.
These overfishing concerns resulted in the U.S. and Palau co-sponsoring a proposal to the March 2010 Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) to list all three large hammerheads on Appendix II of the international treaty. This listing would have triggered strong restrictions to international trade in fins from these species, reducing the economic incentives to continue unabated, ecologically damaging overfishing. Unfortunately, Japan and its allied countries were strongly opposed to such a listing and launched a major effort to defeat the proposal. In the final analysis even though the majority of nations voted in support of the listing, the measure failed because it did not receive the two-thirds vote required for adoption (final vote was 75 in support, 45 against and 14 abstentions).
With the failure of the listing proposal to be adopted by CITES, unregulated fishing and trade in fins will continue with the real risk that hammerhead populations in many parts of their range will be extirpated or at the very least reduced to the point of ecological extinction. This will not only add another significant disruption to the proper working of our ocean ecosystems, but is also ethically deplorable.
So what’s to be done now to try and conserve hammerhead sharks? The Guy Harvey Research Institute scientists and their collaborators from the Save Our Seas Foundation are working quickly to collect scientific data on the population status of hammerhead sharks worldwide, and develop rapid DNA forensics tools that can be used to track the origin of fins in the market to their geographic origins. This information is essential to bolster the case (get more supporting votes) for international trade restrictions at the next CITES meeting, and for supporting implementation of protective fishery regulations for hammerhead sharks by individual countries.
Thank you for your continued support of the conservation research and policy initiatives that are being worked on to prevent these amazing and unique sharks from being commercially overfished into oblivion.
For a complete list of our other featured blog posts and to see the full line of Guy HarveySportswear, please visit:www.guyharveysportswear.com
A conundrum for management and conservation of one of the Atlantic’s most overfished oceanic species
Here’s an eye-opening tale of how little we really know about the diversity of life in our oceans. And why scientific information is so critical for sustaining our fisheries. A simple case of mistaken fish species identity has really messed up what we thought we knew about the magnificent, but severely overfished white marlin. Furthermore, this unrecognized mistake, which has occurred for decades, is raising serious questions about how we can better manage the white marlin to ensure its future survival.
So what’s this mistake? It turns out that for years, anglers thinking they were catching the prized white marlin may have caught an entirely different species instead! Just three years ago, a team of scientists from the Guy Harvey Research Institute (GHRI) at Nova Southeastern University and NOAA Fisheries in Florida made a startling discovery – they confirmed the existence of a previously unrecognized billfish species that looks very similar to a white marlin (see photo). Known as the roundscale spearfish, this new billfish species has now been found throughout the Atlantic Ocean, where its distribution overlaps that of the real white marlin.
Then in December 2009, the same scientific team reported that roundscale spearfish made up a significant portion (about 27%) of the commercial catch that was previously believed to be white marlin.
By now you may be asking, “what’s the fuss?” The problem is that because the existence of the roundscale spearfish was unrecognized until recently, its inadvertent misidentification as white marlin for decades makes past assessments of white marlin population sizes – which are based on fisheries catch data – inaccurate. Basically, what used to be called the “white marlin” was actually a mixture of two species!
What does this mean for the future of the threatened, real white marlin? Given huge concerns about its depleted populations, two petitions (in 2002 and 2007) to list the white marlin under the U.S. Endangered Species Act were considered. If such a listing had gone through, it would likely have put an end to white marlin fishing tournaments, which infuse millions of dollars into the recreational fishing industry as well as local economies. Now the discovery of a look-alike species, realization of it’s long-standing mix-up with white marlin, and the fact that it makes up a substantial portion of past “white marlin” catch, raises considerable confusion regarding the accuracy of our biological knowledge about white marlin and its population sizes. Two issues are clear: First, it’s back to the drawing board to figure out what the white marlin population size really is and how to better manage this species before its populations completely crash. Second, it also means that there is another large billfish species out there (the roundscale spearfish) that we know nothing about and that could very well also be declining rapidly due to overfishing.
I find it remarkable that the existence of a large billfish species in U.S. waters went unnoticed until just three years ago! This “oops” moment points to the urgent need for more scientific research about our planet’s oceans before we lose even more biodiversity.
The good news is that the scientific team from the GHRI and NOAA Fisheries is making fast progress on developing the tools and providing the information needed to help fishery managers better conserve the white marlin and roundscale spearfish. Thank you for your continued support of such important scientific research through the purchase of Guy Harvey sportswear. It makes a statement that you care about the welfare of our fragile oceans!
Thank you so much for your patronage of Guy Harvey art inspired sportswear. Did you know that your purchase of this high quality fishing clothing and fishing t shirts helps our collective efforts on behalf of ocean conservation? Let me explain.
The oceans are a signature part of life on Planet Earth, including factors critical to human survival such as food resources and climate modulation. Most people who earn their livelihoods from the ocean or use it for their recreation are now well aware of the increasingly degraded state of marine ecosystems resulting from overfishing, coastal over-development, pollution and habitat destruction by humans.
But can anything be done to stop this degradation and even restore our marine ecosystems before these changes become irreversible?
Luckily, the answer is still yes and there is evidence to support this optimistic outlook. There is, however, also a strong “but” associated with this optimism – and that is corrective action can no longer be kept on the back burner on our environmental priority list. In fact, all credible science points to the fact that preventing irreversible damage to our oceans will need effective management and conservation actions to be implemented immediately and dynamically on a global scale.
Unfortunately, taking corrective action to restore the health of our oceans has been easier said than done because the issues involved are socioeconomically and scientifically complex. Adding to this complexity is that the oceans provide an average of 18% (developed countries) to 25% (developing countries) of the protein consumed by humans. And the demand for seafood continues to increase with growing human populations and space limitations for agriculture on land. Without urgent, major improvements in how we collectively manage and conserve our oceans worldwide, we face the alarming prospect that the health of earth’s marine ecosystems and fishery resources is quickly becoming strained beyond the point of recovery.
So what’s to be done to improve the state of our oceans?
The absolute foundation for improving ocean governance is the availability of solid scientific information on how marine ecosystems work, and a much larger segment of the public that is educated and passionate about and involved in ocean issues. And this is where we fall short.
Guy Harvey Research Institute at Nova Southeastern University’s Oceanographic Center campus in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida
And this is where the Guy Harvey Research Institute (GHRI) and its sister organization, the Guy Harvey Ocean Foundation (GHOF) are playing major roles. Providing this critical foundation of marine ecosystem knowledge via high quality scientific research, university-level education and national and international dissemination of research findings to the general public via major media is the focus of the GHRI’s activities. The GHOF supports the scientific research of the GHRI as its research arm, and also focuses on public education and ocean advocacy activities via documentaries and new generation (social and web) media dissemination of marine conservation issues.
History of the Guy Harvey Research Institute
Dr. Guy Harvey, himself a marine biologist, has long recognized the foundational relationship between scientific knowledge and effective ocean governance. To advance this knowledge he established in 1999 the Guy Harvey Research Institute in collaboration with the Oceanographic Center at Nova Southeastern University in Florida. The mission of the GHRI is to play a global leadership role in providing the scientific information required for effective marine conservation. Its worldwide research work is supported by the Guy Harvey Ocean Foundation and various government and private foundation grants and individual donors who are passionate about the welfare of the earth’s oceans. A major and long-standing supporter of the GHRI’s scientific research activities is the AFTCO Mfg Co. Incorporated via its AFTCO Bluewater line of Guy Harvey sportswear. The GHRI is also part of the academic arm of the Oceanographic Center at Nova Southeastern University, and provides advanced training to U.S. and international students in marine conservation research. This research training focus is an important part of the GHRI’s activities in educating the future stewards of our ocean’s health.
As a guest blogger on this site, I will periodically report on the GHRI’s research activities and important new findings generally in marine science and conservation. Also, please visit our web sites for an overall perspective on what we do. I hope you will find this information to be of interest and it will spur you on to become and remain active supporters for protecting and restoring our fragile oceans and its ecosystems. Thank you again for supporting ocean conservation with your purchases. I hope you will wear your Guy Harvey sportswear with pride and the knowledge that you are making a difference!
We’re excited to add Dr. Mahmood Shivji to our list of contributors to the Guy Harvey Sportswear blog. Dr. Shivji is the Director of the Guy Harvey Research Institute and Professor at Nova Southeastern University’s Oceanographic Center in Florida.
His research combines DNA- and field-based approaches to provide information essential for improving conservation and management of marine species. Dr. Shivji is an internationally recognized authority on shark and billfish conservation research, but if caught off guard – or plied with good red wine and dark chocolate – will admit to surreptitiously working on uncharismatic, tiny coral reef invertebrates also.
Dr Shivji releasing tiger shark after tagging and DNA sampling
The research program he directs for the Guy Harvey Research Institute (GHRI) is global in scope. The GHRI’s research, including the amazing discovery that female sharks can give virgin birth and finding new species of sharks and billfish, have consistently received worldwide coverage in the major media, including the Economist, Time, Newsweek, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the BBC and National Public Radio. Dr. Shivji’s research on the shark fin trade and its impacts on shark populations is currently on display at the Smithsonian National Museum’s Ocean Hall in Washington DC.
We’re looking forward to his blog posts and know you will find them engaging as well!
In October of 2009 I was inducted into the IGFA Hall of Fame. It was a great honor joining the ranks of some of my greatest heroes in the fishing arena. The following is a transcript of my acceptance speech.
Guy's induction ceremony acceptance speech into the IGFA Fishing Hall of Fame on October 27, 2009
“Thank you very much Mark. Mark set a standard in his TV shows for many other hosts to follow, including me, and I am particularly appreciative of your advice and assistance. I am looking forward to the day when you teach me how to catch a sailfish on a cigar!
Congratulations to the other deserving people being honored tonight. The international nature of the IGFA is reflected in the range of nationalities awarded here, a Costa Rican, an Auzzie, two Americans and a Jamaican. Jack, it’s good to see you here, mate!
Ever since I can remember I have been FISHING. All that time ago, just the mention of the names like Ernest Hemingway, Alfred Glassell, John Morris, Joan Wulff, Stu Apte, Mark Sosin conjured images of pioneers in their respective fields, who I wanted to meet. Well…. I eventually did. One of the people then, who had the most dramatic impact on me was Pierre Clostermann. As a boy I had two favorite books to read, one was The Old Man and the Sea, and the other was the best unbiased narrative of the air war in the Battle of Britain from WWII, a book called “The Big Show”, by Pierre Clostermann. I would read these books every week. Then, as I grew older, I discovered that not only did Pierre Clostermann fish a great deal, but he was also an IGFA trustee. I finally met him at the first IGFA auction 25 years ago in Palm Beach, and we became great friends after that. Hemingway had been out of reach for a while, and so Pierre was my first living mentor.
There have been others along the way, people who I have met through the IGFA board or through my business and that I have admired and respected and who have made their own mark in this sport that embraces…. so many disciplines. There have been many innovators in our hundred year old sport, from boat designers, tackle inventors, authors, scientists, resource managers and administrators, all pioneers in their time, whose dedication and INDUSTRY have allowed us to arrive at this point.
I feel fortunate that I have had the SAME opportunity to be as creative as they were and transform a hobby into becoming an integral part of our sport fishing CULTURE and HERITAGE.
I am certainly not the first, there being several other successful marine sport fishing artists to have made their mark; Lynne Bogue Hunt, (already in the HoF), Stanley Meltzoff, Russ Smiley, Kent Ullberg, Al Barnes, and Don Ray to name the best. The CHALLENGE has been in creating the process whereby this art is made available to a wide cross section of society. I had a lot of help from a series of wonderful people in the last two decades, many of whom are here tonight, but I must thank the late Scott Boyd, Barbara Currie, Charlie Forman and Raleigh Werking who got the process going, and more recently Bill Shedd and his AFTCO team who have taken the business to new heights. In those early years I received considerable support and encouragement from the IGFA through the efforts of the late chairman Elwood Harry, and the immediate past President of IGFA, Mike Leech.
Of all the other artists in this genre, Kent Ullberg has been my reference and guiding force, a man whose illustrious fine art career is littered with awards. Kent has helped our tiny niche to make a very large impact in the world of WILD LIFE ART which has even raised a few eyebrows in the realm of FINE ART.
This profession has been and continues to be most gratifying. The process of creating new work, inspired by a myriad of encounters above and below the surface, is exciting enough. I have visited many exotic angling locations, but ONLY A FEW have tolerated my presence more than once…. particularly Tropic Star Lodge which is the greatest big game angling destination in the western hemisphere. Such is the inspiration derived from this unique place that I recently completed a 334 page book about the angling history and magnificent fishery this remote location has to offer. In these pages I was able to engage all my disciplines; art, photography, TV documentaries, science, conservation and story-telling….boy are there some stories! After all….It’s a book about… FISHING.
I have just released another book, called Fishes of the Open Ocean, authored by well known Australian fish biologist Dr. Julian Pepperell and with 170 images illustrated by me. It is the first reference book of its kind, which describes all the fish that inhabit the epi- pelagic zone of the open ocean at some point in their life history. Here Julian needed my services as a fish illustrator, and I was very glad to assist him with this book.
In the thirty years that I have been in the business of painting marine wildlife there have been many failures, but fortunately more successes. And with that success there comes… RESPONSIBILITY. During this same time we have witnessed the rapid decline of species that are the ICONS of our sport. Human population growth and the increasing demand for protein have brought many species to the brink of extinction. Nowadays, many of us sitting in this room, spend more time trying to save these creatures rather than actually fishing for them. For wild life artists generally, the task at hand is to reflect this concern in our work, and as more environmental issues come to the fore, so my art and that of other artists and their subject matter becomes more relevant in people’s personal experience and in what they see happening around them.
This concern has been the driving force in the formation of the GHRI ten years ago, and more recently the GHOF, my new organization mandated to raise funds necessary to carry out research work and to conduct education and outreach. The demise of all these species is CONSUMER driven, so now the emphasis is to educate consumers about ISSUES that face marine resources. To most people, any creature living beneath the surface is out of sight, therefore OUT OF MIND. In a restaurant or supermarket situation, the consumer gives little consideration to what species this is or from whence it came.
Research… followed by education… leads to conservation. My goal has been and continues to be… raise the funds for research, and use the art and TV to educate the consumer… for whom conservation will become second nature.
I have many people I want to thank, but firstly I want to thank the IGFA for giving me this recognition, which is in acknowledgement of a TEAM EFFORT. I am very fortunate in that I have a great TEAM at Guy Harvey Inc, (Steve, Harvey, Missy, Pat, Jay, Todd and Greg) and in Grand Cayman, James, Mariasol and Bruno all of whom have contributed a huge amount of effort and loyalty toward achieving our goal. In addition I want to thank our MAJOR partners; Bill Shedd and the AFTCO team, and Peter MacFarland with his team at the GHIG.
There are some other unique personalities I have met along this route, one of whom is Bill Boyce. Bill has been a great friend for many years and whose angling ability, photographic magic, friendship and zest for life have all resulted in some unique experiences in many far flung locations. Another such person is Tim Choate who has pioneered many of the great fishing destinations I have been fortunate enough to visit, such as in Guatemala, and the Galapagos. Tim’s latest project has been the coordination of the governments of Central America, through CABA, to recognize billfish as a recreational fishing resource. Keep up the good work my friend.
I want to acknowledge the continued assistance of my TV director and producer, Ken Kavanaugh at Bonnier Corporation, plus two tremendous camera guys, Rick Westphal, and Dee Gele, who foolishly followed me around several continents for five years getting into harm’s way. Diana Udel has also played a very important role in producing my first TV series, and in the landmark documentary we produced for PBS, “BILLFISH, NOMADS OF THE OCEANS.”
David Ritchie has made a big impact as editorial director at Bonnier Corporation and has edited two of my four books, the most recent one being “Panama Paradise; a tribute to Tropic Star Lodge”.
I want to thank all the great captains and mates who have shared their vast knowledge and experiences with me, and put me on some great fish both topside and… in underwater encounters. Among them are Bobby Dehart, the late Dan Timmons, Clay Hensley, the late Jim Davis, Laurie Wright, Trevor Cockle, Skip Smith, O.B. O’Bryan, Jimmy Grant, Travis Peterson, Barkey Garnsey, Peter Wright and Anthony Mendillo, plus some of the amazing captains in Guatemala and Costa Rica, but particularly those captains and mates at Tropic Star Lodge in Panama.
I want to acknowledge the significant role played by Dr. Mahmood Shivji at the GHRI and Dean Dick Dodge at NSU Oceanographic Centre. Many of you will have read about Mahmood’s research efforts mostly on sharks, sponsored by funds generated from my licensing programs.
Family; They are HERE! I have my Mum, two brothers Jonno and Piers, his wife Connie and daughter Mikayla. My beautiful wife Gillian is here plus my daughter Jessica, and my son Alexander. Luckily we have been able to wet a line or two together, and go for some exciting dives with them over the years. By the way, my Mum was the first lady angler in Jamaica, to catch two blue marlin in one day back in 1967.
Guy Giving his Mom a big hug after the induction.
Thank you for supporting the IGFA. Please have a great evening and I look forward to seeing many of you back here tomorrow night for the 2nd annual fundraiser and auction to support the Guy Harvey Ocean Foundation.
The Guy Harvey exhibition at the IGFA Fishing Hall of Fame featuring Guy's original pen and ink series of the "Old Man and the Sea".
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.
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.
