Both incidents are believed to have taken place off the coast of Sarasota; both are believed to have been perpetrated by privileged scumbags who may routinely torture animals.
The News Service of Florida reports that elected officials at the state level, which is dominated by Republicans, are outraged, and would like to amp up punishment for those who engage in such acts. Even Governor Rick Scott, who did nothing to block the grotesque Florida black bear hunt in 2015, watched the video and called it a "disturbing video" showing a "hateful act" and, according to the News Service of Florida, called on state wildlife officials to evaluate ways to hold accountable those who would commit such wrongs.
"The brutality and disrespect shown to this animal is sickening and I am sure that you share my outrage over these individuals' heinous actions,” Scott wrote to Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission Chairman Brian Yablonski on July 28, according to NSF.
State Rep. Alex Miller, R-Sarasota, said in a Facebook post that if there's no legal means of punishing such abuses, she would file legislation to create one.
“It is unfortunate that it takes events like this to bring to light other cruel animal abuses that occur on our waters…If current law does not find this to be a prosecutable crime, I will present a bill this session that brings more clarity," she said.
Despite a lack of will to act on a variety of pro-environment measures, state lawmakers have already passed measures aimed at protecting sharks.
This year, they passed a bill that beefed up the consequences for anyone who is busted for finning a shark while at sea in Florida waters.
Lora Snyder, who heads up environmental nonprofit Oceana’s shark campaign, said the shark-dragging video ought to spur greater awareness that sharks are generally not a threat to humans and thus should be left alone.
“The shark abuse videos that have come out recently are horrific, and are reminders that sharks have more to fear from humans than we do from them, she said in an email.
Those who are outraged, she added, ought to consider the bigger picture when it comes to shark conservation efforts.
"These videos are especially troubling, as right now, one-fourth of sharks and their relatives are threatened with extinction due to human activities such as finning, overfishing and…accidentally being caught in other fisheries," Snyder said. "One of the greatest threats facing sharks is the demand for their fins, which encourages the wasteful and inhumane practice of shark finning –cutting the fins off of a shark and discarding its body at sea, where it could drown, bleed to death, or be eaten alive by other fish."
Shark-finning is lucrative but incredibly cruel and destructive to ocean ecosystems. An estimated 73 million of sharks die every year because of the practice, which typically involves fishermen pulling sharks from the water, removing their fins and dropping their bodies back in the water, where the animals have no means of propelling themselves and thus starve on the ocean floor — all for some dumb soup people pay a lot of money to eat.
Technically the practice is banned in U.S. waters, but it still occurs because there are loopholes that allow it to occur.
The bill — which was passed unanimously in the Senate — and Scott signed it into law. (What's also of note is that the bill's House sponsor was Sarasota-area State Rep. Joe Gruters, an early Donald Trump supporter who served as his Florida campaign's co-chair.)
Cool.
Yet ocean conservationists complain that the law doesn't go far enough.
The problem?
It doesn't outlaw or disincentivize the practice outright.
Instead, it just drastically increases penalties for people who are found to have "separated" the sharks' fins from their bodies while still at sea. If you catch and kill a shark an wait till you're at the dock before you sever its fins for a pretty penny, you're all good — assuming you didn't end the life of a member of a species of shark not among the dozen or so you're allowed to kill.
To outlaw the sale and trade of shark fins in Florida and the rest of the nation would help put an end to the practice across the globe once and for all, they argue. And it might have something to do with a powerful lobby, they suspect.
“There’s some opposition from the fishing industry saying the fins are the most valuable part and they should be able to sell them if they catch the shark and land it legally,” Erin Handy, an organizer for the Florida leg of Oceana’s Climate & Energy Campaign, said in March.
The group is also backing the Shark Fin Trade Elimination Act at the federal level, which would ban the sale and trade of shark fins nationwide — something they argue would put a huge dent in the shark fin trade and "reinforce the status of the United States as a leader in shark conservation."
"For anyone who watched these abusive shark videos and wants to find ways they can help sharks, we encourage them to call their members of Congress and tell them to support the Shark Fin Trade Elimination Act," Snyder said. "There’s no place for shark fins in the United States, and it’s time to make that official.”
This article appears in Aug 3-10, 2017.