Shark finning at the Islas de Revillagigedos, March 2008

Here is a link to photos of an illegal shark fishing boat and net at the Islas de Revillagigedos in March of 2008.

http://web.mac.com/daveburroughs/Site/Shar...ges/Photos.html

On our last day at the islands we discovered this fishing boat with it's net wrapped around the boiler at San Benedicto Island. The Mexican Navy was called and intercepted the boat.

These photos are from the first dive made on this net; still wrapped around the boiler. The boiler is the world famous Manta site. We saw no Mantas on this trip. The remains of eight were in the hold of this fishing vessel.

Note the severed shark fins on top the wheel house and upper deck of the fishing vessel. Study the map of the boiler and compare it with the photos. The net was stretched between the two pinnacles and wrapped around the pinnacles. We saw about twelve sharks and perhaps two dolphins. Most of the sharks were thresher sharks.

We have not been allowed to talk about this due to an internal investigation in Mexico. The end result is that the islands are now regularly patrolled by the Mexican Navy and two additional fishing boats have been arrested.

I believe that Eric has been contacted by another member who will right a more extensive article on this event for wetpixel. At least two other people are writing articles on it so you may see more stories about it.

Unfortunately these were my best photos of the trip.

This REALLY sucks!

Several people have told me that in recent years they have not seen the quantity of sharks they used to witness at Socorros. Perhaps this explains why...

I was contacted, but the article was canned due to the internal investigation. I hope to be contacted again, now that it is public...? (is it?)

Yes, it went public this weekend.

Dave,

Is it published in the mainstream media anywhere? It made me ill to hear about this, but now that it is "public" I hope that there will be a fuller discussion of what happened, and whether the steps that the Mexican government has taken will be effective. It strikes me that the guys stationed at Socorro must be bored out of their minds and would welcome real patrol duties. It would give them a sense of purpose.

I wonder what the penalties are for illegal fishing in a biosphere reserve? Do you think they will get anything other than a hand slap?

I hope your photographs and any video folks have, goes mainstream. This will be a real test of how serious the Mexican government are about conservation. Soon there really will be nothing left.

what shocking photos. very sad. a couple of months ago i attended the LIDS and went to the chat on socorro which was being done by the skipper of the nautilus explorer. he did mention then that this activity was going on and that a week or so before he come to the uk his boat chased off a vessel doing something similar if not the same. that boat was put under arrest. i do not know if this was the same incident or not. i was hoping to go out there in 2010 to see what evryone who has visited this area has been raving about. i just hope that i am not too late. the governments of these countries need to hit the skippers hard, to stop them doing this. if anyone knows of anything that i can do to try and help stop this then please PM me with any details. i do not have a great deal of spare time on my hands but i would be willing to spare 3 to 4 hours per week.

When I was there in May the crew of the Solmar V finished cutting away the last piece of the net from the Boiler. They bagged it up and took it back to Cabo. Here are some pics...

It looked like a pretty big mess

The guys attached lift bags to move away the detached pieces

This was at about 120' and it was COLD down there. They worked on that through two or three dives.

A couple more pieces to snip

Net is almost detached from the reef

The last piece of net as it shoots to the surface

We did see a few mantas there but there were more dolphins chasing fish.

I know that there are a lot of government meetings going on about this, but I don't know what progress is being made. Hopefully someone can fill us in.

The following is an e-mail from Mike Lever; captain and owner of the Nautilus Explorer.

I am very pleased to be able to report that the Mexican authorities

> have made excellent progress in locking down the marine biosphere at

> Socorro. This is subsequent to our intercept of the illegal fishing

> boat Tita. A new group has been formed inside Mexico and is

> comprised of some of the most influential divers in the country as

> well as some highly placed conservation people - the group will be

> called Socorro por Socorro. I am also pleased to report that there

> was a high level meeting in Mexico City a month ago that was attended

> by top officials in the Mexican Park service, law enforcement,

> secretary of the Navy and a representative of President Calderon. El

> Presidente has personally ordered that the Tita be prosecuted to the

> fullest extent of the law and the fisherman sent to prison. Since that

> meeting, there have been two dedicated patrols of Socorro and the

> surrounding islands and two more boats were caught fishing illegally

> in the reserve.

> We are very gratified attention to this Mexico personal note, I am

> very grateful to everybody who was out on the boat with me

for staying cool and allowing the situation to

> be handled within Mexican infrastructure.

The attachment to this post is for the non profit that created a video that was widely distributed among the Mexican government and Mexican TV to publicize this event and cause.

I know of at least two more people who plan on writing articles about these events. Permission was give just last week to release this information. So as of yet nothing has been written or broadcast outside of Mexico so far.

The Solmar V has also cooperated on this project. As noted in the above post they arrived the day after we left. As I understand it they brought the top Mexican shark expert with them. As seen above they removed the net.

Revillagigedos_Doc_Project_3.doc

lets just hope that the punishment is severe enough to make other skippers/crews think about going out to undertake illegal activities. cheers for the posting.