Animal Rights Activists Protest Shark Tournament

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Animal Rights Activists Protest Shark Tournament

Friday, 19 June 2009 07:28

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Montauk tournament With the 23rd Annual Star Island Yacht Club Shark Tournament in Montauk, a much anticipated event within the Long Island fishing community that runs June 18 to 20, animal rights activists are protesting to stop the event.

The Humane Society of the United States and Fishpond USA, a major recreational fishing products company, are fighting to put an end to the tournament on the grounds of it being detrimental to an already dwindling shark population caused by over fishing on the east coast.

At last year’s Star Island Yacht Club Tournament, more than $760,000 were awarded for the capture of 42 sharks, the biggest being a 353-pound thresher shark caught by 16-year old John Digertt. Thresher, Mako, and Porbeago sharks, which are frequent targets at shark tournaments, are facing worldwide extinction, according to a 2008 study by the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources.

“The Star Island Yacht Club Shark Tournament encourages ecologically damaging practices, and exploits sharks in the process by celebrating their deaths with large cash prizes,” said John Grandy, vice president of the Humane Society of the United States in a statement. “We call on the organizers of this event to end this tournament now.”

Tournament protesters accuse the tournament as condoning atrocities against sharks by hanging and weighing them alive, and then dismembering them in front of children.

“Shark tournaments are a disgrace to the environment and the community,” said John LeCoq, cofounder of Fishpond USA, in a statement. “Montauk should stop playing host to this kind of brutality.”

(From longislandpress.com, New York)