Downeast Maine Shark
Tournament
Dr. John Grandy is a senior vice president for
Wildlife & Habitat Protection, which is a well-paid executive position at
the Humane Society of the U.S. (HSUS). This year (2008), he and his radical
friends at HSUS have launched an all-out attack on shark tournaments, despite
the fact that these events are legal, and follow all federal guidelines issued
by the National Marine Fisheries Service that regulates the fishing of sharks in
U.S. waters.
Dr. Grandy and his friends at HSUS have decided that shark
fishing is cruel, and therefore they are going to impose their will on this form
of legal fishing, and try and force an end to it. They use several tactics to
this end, the most common of which is to call, email, fax, and mail letters to
the anyone who is a sponsor in a shark tournament, telling them all the reasons
they at HSUS believe that shark tournaments are ‘demeaning, and degrading’ to
sharks (among other things), and how they are ‘sending the message that sharks
don’t matter’ to all the unwashed masses out there. They then point out how many
members they have nationwide, and how many members they have in your state,
subtly implying these people will be working to boycott your business and/or
protesting your business. Finally, they advise the sponsor that if they refuse
to stop supporting these legal fishing events that they happen to dislike, their
company will be included in a Press Release that HSUS is putting together about
the shark tournament, and ‘all that it encompasses’. The idea of course is to
shake down these companies by implying they will lose business once HSUS does a
Press Release to inform everyone that their company is involved in supporting a
shark tournament. Dr. Grandy called and harassed several sponsors from the
Downeast Maine Shark Tournament, using the techniques described above.
They also posted the contact information for the Mayor of Saco, Maine on the Humane Society website. We hold the weigh-ins for our tournament in Saco, Maine, so they told their radical minions to call him to pester him into not allowing our tournament to use the Camp Ellis Pier in Saco for our weigh in.
As can be seen, Dr. Grandy spends a lot of
time on the phone, harassing law-abiding citizens who don’t see things his way.
He also likes to show up on paid junkets to shark tournaments, where he tries to
steal the media attention and focus it on his ‘end the shark tournaments’
agenda. He is sometimes accompanied by a pseudo-celebrity, as he apparently
believes bringing an animal rights extremist with him that has been on TV
somehow adds credibility to his crusade against shark tournaments. For example,
this year (2008) he brought along Nigel Barker (yes, I know….Nigel who?!) to the
Monster Shark Tournament this year, in hopes that would garner him more media
attention to get his message across. Nigel is a former Australian clothes model,
who is also a photographer. Recently he has even ascended to the cerebral and
prestigious position of a judge on the TV show “America’s Next Top model”. I
don't know about you, but I can't think of a better way to demonstrate your
organization's knowledge and comprehension of the issues involved in fishing for
large pelagics like sharks than to have a guy who takes pictures, models
clothes, and judges other models for a living be your media spokesperson when
you show up at legal fishing events to harass the organizers and
participants.
Dr. Grandy and his executive colleagues at HSUS have an
image problem, however. They know that many of their donors think the HSUS is
still that organization from the 1970’s whose predominate mission was to take
care of dogs and cats, including funding shelters to take care of those that did
not have a home. My, how the times have changed. Now they are a multimillion
dollar conglomerate that has gone from an animal welfare organization to an
animal rights organization. However, they know that if they are perceived as an
extremist organization, reasonable people who want to help out animals – but not
pay for people like Dr. Grandy to travel around to legal shark tournaments and
shake down their sponsors – might not be so quick to send a check. So today they
have to spend a lot of money on public relations, so people will hopefully not
notice how cozy they are with the extremely radical group PETA, or how they do
not actually operate an animal shelter anywhere these days. To find out what the
HSUS is all about these days, go to:
www.activistcash.com
When you get
to their home page, pulldown the ‘Activist’ menu at the top of the page, and
select ‘Humane Society of the U.S.’ and enjoy your reading.
You can be
sure that HSUS will launch a PR campaign to try and play down everything that
many people – including me – have had to say about what they and Dr. Grandy have
done to try and end the legal fishing for sharks, particularly in tournaments.
When they do that, go back and read what was written here. We all have issues
and disagreements with some aspect of events that effect our lives.... speed
limits, minimum wage laws, school taxes…..or even some aspects of legal hunting
or fishing that we may not like or agree with us. But the vast majority of us do
not launch campaigns to terminate legal activities that other people partake in,
just because we don’t like it – HSUS is not looking for middle ground here –
they simply are demanding an end to legal shark fishing, because they think it
is cruel and they do not like it. That folks, is extremism.
Finally, I
personally received a phone call, email, fax, and overnight express letter from
Dr. Grandy at my office, basically demanding that I end the Downeast Maine Shark
Tournament immediately, for the reasons he listed in his communications.
I responded to this attempted extortion with an email to him. The body
of this email is listed below. After reading it, should you care to let Dr.
Grandy know what you think of this campaign by him and his vegan friends at HSUS
to end shark fishing, please email his secretary, Kathryn Kullberg (kkullberg@hsus.org) and ask her to forward
it to him. Dr. Grandy does not list a direct email, as he apparently does not
like to receive the types of harassing emails that he regularly sends out to
other people, like those who are involved in legal fishing / hunting activities
that he doesn’t happen to like.
MY RESPONSE TO DR. GRANDY’S
COMMUNICATION TO ME, DEMANDING THAT I STOP THE DOWNEAST MAINE SHARK
TOURNAMENT:
Dear Dr. Grandy:
I typically make it a point not to
engage extremists on any issue, as it is clearly a waste of both my time and the
extremists. In your case, however, I am going to make an exception, so please
read on.
I am in receipt of your voicemails, emails, faxes, and express
mails, admonishing me as the director of the Downeast Maine Shark Tournament to
“immediately move to cancel the 2008 Downeast Maine Shark Tournament”. Your five
page rambling email attachment –filled with some of the most ridiculous
innuendo, ‘selective’ fact portrayals, subtle threats, and anthropomorphic
statements in regards to sharks – was especially obnoxious. Any ‘normal’
individual reading this diatribe can clearly see that you are attempting to
portray yourself and HSUS as a group of reasonable people who are ‘just trying
to do the right thing’ and reign in a bunch of Neanderthals who have the
audacity to think that they should be able to legally fish for large pelagics,
just because the federal agency that regulates sharks says it is okay to do so.
You and your ilk clearly see hunters and fishermen as a bunch of illiterate,
drunken savages, clinging to their evolutionary instincts that still compel them
to hunt for and fish for other species – unlike the enlightened cerebral
progressives at HSUS - and you project that image to your gullible members to
keep the cash coming in.
Here are some specific observations I have made
from your email communication:
“The Sharks Targeted by Tournaments are in
Trouble Worldwide”
In this section
of your email, you cherry pick people and organizations whose visions / ideas of
shark management emulate yours, and use descriptors like ‘authoritative’,
‘famed’, and ‘critically acclaimed’ to describe these people and organizations.
It’s pathetically ironic that you mention almost as an aside here that “It is
true that the US Government through the NMFS has not yet designated these sharks
as endangered species when every other indicator and a worldwide consensus
exists that sharks are in real trouble”. So here you are making the statement
that it is only the NMFS who does not see the status and management plan of
pelagic shark stocks your way? Every indicator and group in the world OTHER than
the NMFS is on your side? This does wonders for your credibility Dr. Grandy, and
would make most reasonable people stop reading this contrived statement right
here. If HSUS really cared about the world-wide status of sharks, you would put
every dime of your ‘Stop the Shark Tournaments’ budget into working with the
NMFS and NOAA in this country in formulating the federal regulations regarding
allowable quotas for recreational and commercial shark fishing. You know – those
rules that us law abiding citizens actually adhere to when it comes to
commercial and recreational shark fishing in the United States. More
importantly, you would use the money you waste shaking down people who run shark
tournaments and their sponsors to help create enforceable, international rules
to end the practice of shark finning, a predominately illegal practice that
results in the slaughter of tens of millions of sharks annually world-wide,
simply to harvest their fins. To use the lexicon of the HSUS, all of the
‘authoritative’, ‘famed’, and ‘critically acclaimed’ organizations involved with
the long-term management of sharks agree that shark finning is by far and away
the single greatest factor that adversely affects shark populations. And these
organizations are not wasting valuable resources going after legal shark
tournaments, which they realize do not even make a blip on the radar screen in
terms of the approximately 100 million sharks that are killed annually
world-wide.
“Cruelty and the Message of Tournaments”
“There can be
no denying the cruelty and inhumanity of events such as the Downeast Maine Shark
Tournament”. With this one sentence, there can be little doubt as to the real
reason that HSUS is interested in putting an end to shark tournaments. You
people are simply unable to comprehend that there are far more people in this
world than there are HSUS members, who enjoy hunting and fishing and have no
qualms with the legal harvesting of animals for food, or even for sport. So
allow me to make another statement here, similar to yours: “There can be no
denying that anyone who describes a shark fishing tournament as ‘cruel’,
‘inhumane’, ‘gruesome’, ‘grotesque’, ‘degrading’, and ‘demeaning’ (which you
have done) is against all forms of fishing and hunting, whether for food or
sport. Furthermore, no sane person could possibly miss the fact that you and
HSUS are clearly anthropomorphic with regards to sharks, equating them with
human beings when you describe a fish that is displayed dead as being “degraded,
humiliated, and demeaned”. A human can feel humiliated and degraded because of
such things as abuse, poverty, or lack of education – a fish cannot. For
example, a person in southern Maine that is denied the basics of food and
shelter might experience degradation and humiliation, because HSUS and other
radical groups stop fundraising events - such as the Downeast Maine Shark
Tournament - that might otherwise help them acquire these things. People such as
those in highly paid management positions at HSUS, however, like to ascribe
these emotions to sharks both dead and alive, because they view sharks as
absolutely no different than people, and believe they should enjoy the exact
same rights as human beings.
You ramble on further here, stating that
“these tournaments take place in a carnival-like atmosphere, that induces
cheering that welcomes the display and photo-op that comes with each new
arrival. Children are encouraged to revel in the death and dismemberment of
these creatures; indeed they are often allowed to stand or sit near the front of
the tournament weigh in station so that they do not miss anything”.
I’m
sure this keeps you awake at night. This is simply further evidence of your real
feelings about fishing in general. You know very well that tuna tournaments, red
fish tournaments, billfish tournaments, and countless other saltwater and
freshwater fishing tournaments use this exact same format. When the fish are
weighed in, it is in a carnival atmosphere, with kids and adults present who
want to see the fish come in, dead or alive. There are big cash prizes, and it
is in fact about sport. And its perfectly legal, which of course is your 9th
circle of Dante’s Inferno, and this is what motivates you and your radical
brethren to continue to harass law-abiding citizens who kill fish for food or
sport. Is the killing of a striped bass, blue fish, billfish, king mackeral, red
drum, cod, haddock or any of the other countless species of fish that are caught
in tournaments, or simply caught by individual anglers for food, somehow less
‘cruel, inhumane, and grotesque’ ‘degrading’, or ‘demeaning’ than the killing of
a shark? How could it possibly be so? They are all fish with the exception that
the shark is generally larger. There is no way you could look someone in the eye
and say that you are radical about how sharks are killed and displayed in
tournaments, but you have no problem with the similar treatment and display of
other fish in other tournaments. You and HSUS would end fishing tomorrow if it
were within your power, and anyone with an IQ over 60 can easily fathom
this.
“Catch and Release is Self-Serving to Participants and Causes
Significant Mortality to Sharks”
This section of your harassing email
could not be more supportive to what I said above regarding what it really is
about shark tournaments that bothers you well paid executives down at
HSUS. You again ramble on about sharks being “hooked, gaffed, bled,
suffocated” and this is clearly painful to you. And yet, as any fisherman knows,
countless fishing tournaments for many species involve the fish being “hooked,
gaffed, bled, suffocated”. I go out and catch a striped bass in my boat, it goes
in the fish well and suffocates, and then I filet it later. My friend catches a
100 lb football tuna in the Gulf of Maine and brings it to the side of the boat
and gaffs it, bleeds it, and then filets it after its dead. That’s different
than what happens to sharks in a shark tournament? That’s not ‘cruel’ from a
HSUS executive management position? You have no problem with that? Sure Dr.
Grandy, we believe you. You love fishing…its only the killing and displaying of
sharks that concerns you.
You also greatly overstate the mortality rate
of sharks released after being caught. You cite anecdotal evidence from an 80
something year old shark fisherman (Frank Mundus) that “10 out of 12 sharks that
are hooked will die”. I spoke with Mundus about this. He knows it is anecdotal,
and it is his take based on returns from his tagging of sharks. The fact that
you would cite this man – hoping that it somehow gives your ridiculous arguments
credibility because it comes from one of the people you view as the ‘enemy’ –
again speaks volumes about you. You forgot to add in the part here that Frank
Mundus has been making a living for over two decades now by promoting himself in
any way that he can through books, tapes, taking people out on shark charters in
Montauk to celebrate the 30th year of the movie Jaws, etc. And after making this
‘guess’ about catch and release mortality, he conveniently shows up at shark
tournaments with his latest marketing scheme, a circle hook he calls the
‘Monster Hook’, that he wants to sell to shark fisherman because – according to
him, but nobody else - 10 out of 12 sharks caught and released die later. Even
the gullible people you have managed to fool on most aspects of shark
tournaments and shark fishing in general are unlikely to buy this.
“Ex Post Facto Research on sharks killed in the Tournament Doesn’t
Justify the Tournament or the Killing”
This statement is so ridiculous
that it really is not worth responding to, but I will give it a little
attention. Any reasonable person – a category of person which HSUS executives do
not seem to fall under – can clearly ascertain from previous discussion here
that you people have an issue with fishing period, and shark tournaments happen
to be whats on the docket for protesting this budget year. Anyone of us
law-abiding citizens who wants to run a legal fishing tournament of any kind
does not need to ‘justify’ it to you people. Your ridiculous assertion that the
work of Dr. James Sulikowski, our head tournament biologist, provides no useful
information and is ‘opportunistically conducted after the fact and should not be
used as implicit or explicit justification for killing sharks’ is simply another
one of your pathetic attempts to minimize anything that could possibly be
construed as ‘useful’ in association with this legal event, since you so
desperately want to see it and all other forms of fishing ended. I started
this tournament in 2004 simply to raise money to help people and families in
need– period. I did not then, nor do I now, need HSUS permission to do this. I
brought the tournament biologists into it, since it provided an opportunity for
marine science students at the University of New England to study sharks. And
since this is in fact a tournament that legally kills a very small number of
sharks each year and weighs them in at a weigh-in venue, I also have no qualms
whatsoever with the public coming to look at these few sharks, to see an animal
very close up that they would not likely see otherwise (unless they sport-fish
for pelagics), and to learn about the anatomy and biology of these fish from the
tournament biologists present at the weigh-in venue.
If you are going to
have a legal fishing tournament, prize money is going to be involved, and HSUS
seems to think this is something we need to apologize for. Thousands of fishing
tournaments occur around the world each year, which pits the skill of anglers
against various species of fish. It is in fact a sport, and generally the angler
with the greatest skill will win the tournament. It is absolutely ridiculous to
assert that a weigh-in at a shark fishing tournament ‘sends the wrong message’
to people and that this somehow promotes the notion that it is “okay to kill
sharks”.
Do you honestly expect people who are capable of thinking for
themselves to believe your assertion that if someone goes to a weigh in at a
shark tournament and sees a dead shark, they walk away from that event with some
new-found thought process about sharks that screams out to them “hey its okay to
kill these animals – I think I will go out and kill one right now!!”. Right…and
everyone who sees a weigh-in at a bass tournament leaves the event thinking “I
have to go out and kill some bass, and everyone who sees a weigh-in at a tuna
tournament leaves the event thinking “I have to go out and kill some tuna”, and
everyone who sees a weigh-in at a billfish tournament leaves the event thinking
“I have to go out and kill some billfish”! Try decaf, Dr. Grandy.
Here’s
another of your quotes that appeared the NY Daily News, taken from your publicly
funded trip to Guy Lombardo Marina in Freeport NY to harass law-abiding
fishermen participating in a legal shark fishing event, promote your extremist
agenda, and get free publicity from a gullible press:
“The message
of shark tournaments is that sharks don’t matter”.
"The notion that we
are hauling them up on docks, making a mockery of them, to win big cash prizes,
is appalling,"
The message of shark tournaments is that “sharks don’t
matter”? You know, if you actually did anything other than sit in your plush
Washington office and try to formulate new ways to trick the public into
believing your organization is really not a radical fringe group - as it clearly
is – in order to get them to keep giving you money, you might actually realize
that the people who sport fish for sharks probably care more about these animals
than most of the people you have duped into opening their checkbooks. We enjoy
sport fishing for many species of fish, and want our kids to be able to do the
same. We pump millions of dollars into state and federal economies in the form
of licenses, boats, tackle, fuel, charters, bait, etc. In fact, many of us have
never intentionally killed a shark, and even those who have killed a shark for
sport or food reasons kill very few. I would bet I know over 90% of the people
who fish for sharks here in southern Maine, and it is only very rarely does
someone intentionally harvest a mako or thresher, but never a blue shark (with
the exception of the 5 or 6 that are weighed in during the tournament each
year).
Also, your propensity to continually make ridiculous comments such
as “the message of shark tournaments is that sharks don’t matter” continues to
confirm that you are indeed one of the following (or both): 1. outright liar, or
2. someone who really does despise all types of fishing. I say this because if
it were actually true that “the message of shark tournaments is that sharks
don’t matter”, then it has to be true that “the message of bass tournaments is
that bass don’t matter” and “the message of tuna tournaments is that tuna don’t
matter” and “the message of billfish tournaments is that billfish don’t
matter”……you can’t have it both ways. Even you with your scripted BS ‘talking
points’ would have a problem trying to convince the HSUS check-sending, gullible
masses that only shark tournaments send the message that the target species
doesn’t matter – all other fishing tournaments don’t do that. So you’re either
an outright liar or you’re simply a person that cannot tolerate the fact that
people fish both for food and for sport - or you are both.
Now, regarding
your "The notion that we are hauling them up on docks, making a mockery of them,
to win big cash prizes, is appalling," statement, this is more documentation of
what I alluded to earlier in the section titled “Cruelty and the Message of
Tournaments”. The real problem people like you and the rest of the HSUS highly
paid upper management people have with shark tournaments has little to do with
the status of shark stocks, and a lot to do with the fact that you view sharks
as humans in shark skin. Your continued use of phrases like ‘making a mockery of
them’ ‘degrading and humiliating them’ clearly shows that you view these fish as
sentient beings, and you obviously believe that killing a shark in a tournament
for a cash prize is akin to a hit man killing another human for a fee. One can
only imagine what level of extremism could be unleashed from you if we were
talking about killing mammals in a tournament, but I’m sure some legal hunting
events will find out in the near future. Anyone who has doubts about the HSUS
goal to end all hunting should go the website of the Maine Professional Guide
Association, and see what they have posted regarding what HSUS executives have
said about the issue of hunting. The weblink is:
http://www.maineguides.org/referendum/anti_hunter_quotes.shtml
Finally
Dr. Grandy, I have to ask you: Does it make you feel like a big man when you
call up shark tournament sponsors from your Washington office and demand that
they stop being a part of legal activities like shark tournaments simply because
you don’t like it, and if they don’t comply immediately, you remind them of how
many members HSUS has, how many members you have in their state, and that “they
will be included in a Press Release by The HSUS in association with the
tournament and all it encompasses” as you did when you contacted our sponsor
Diageo Guinness and shook them down? Another example of this HSUS ‘strategy’ is
your subtle threat to me in your emails, faxes, and phone calls, instructing me
to immediately cancel the Downeast Maine Shark Tournament ‘on behalf of our 10
million members, 41,000 of whom reside in Maine’. There is only one reason to
make such a ridiculous statement, and that is to imply that your ‘Legions of the
Duped’ – the millions of people whom HSUS has deluded into sending them money by
effectively cloaking your real goals of ultimately ending hunting, fishing,
raising of production farm animals and the use of animals in biomedical research
– will descend like locusts on our tournament with their signs and chants, until
we law abiding citizens see things your way. Well please tell them to strap on
their Birkenstocks, their ‘Fishermen are Evil’ buttons and bring their
“Murderers!” banners down to the weigh ins, because we could sure use the free
publicity again this year. However, you might want to check in with your legal
staff before you publish the contact numbers of public officials in your paid
newspaper rants again this year, as I have heard a rumor going around that you
might get sued if you do that again. Not that it bothers you of course, since
after all, its those Legions of the Duped who ultimately foot the legal bill,
not you. At the very least however, your contact info as well as others at HSUS
will be going out to numerous sports groups and their members if you publish
other peoples contact info, so that these people can let you know how they feel
about your stop the shark tournament campaign.
Speaking of sports
groups, I plan to share your threatening email attachment/shakedown attempts
with hundreds of individuals as well as many hunting and sport fishing groups
throughout New England. By doing so, I feel quite certain that I will remove any
doubt anyone (if there actually was one) may have had as to whether or not the
HSUS really is an extremist organization with a radical agenda, or a bunch of
regular Joe’s who just want to help out animals. Congratulations. I will also
ask them to forward it to as many individuals and other groups as possible. I
will also forward all of them the url for the activist.com website as well,
which really lets the cat out of the bag with you HSUS characters. It is this
kind of radicalism that usually guarantees that somewhere down the road your
agenda will implode on you, people will see you and HSUS for what you really
are, the cash will stop flowing in, and you will be sending your resume to PETA
in hopes that they have an opening for a reasonable guy like
yourself.
Sincerely,
Dr. David Johnson
Director, Downeast
Maine Shark Tournament