Rob Conery: How not to handle a great white shark

Hats off to David Pierce and the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries for denying a permit to the frat boys of the sea, Ocearch.

Ex-soda machine salesman turned television personality Chris Fischer and his boys will have to get their shark wrangling jollies in federal waters after being effectively banned from Massachusetts for 2019. They were also denied a state permit in 2016, to make room for state shark scientist Gregory Skomal to continue his ongoing population study. Skomal tags sharks; he doesn't catch them on baited hooks, and the sharks keep on swimming. Dig it?

A few years ago, in horror, I saw a video where Ocearch caught a great white, strapped bright orange float balls to her head, then proceeded to lift her out of the water on a wooden platform.

This is bad for sharks, who, with their neutral buoyancy, are anatomically meant to live, you know, in water! They have no abdominal muscles to protect their internal organs, so, placed on a hard surface, their own bulk starts crushing them.

Team Ocearch then went to work on the helpless shark. After temporarily blinding her, they first jammed a hose into her mouth, then started in with cordless drills. Sickening.

In “A River Runs Through It” Norman Maclean wrote, “If our father had had his say, nobody who did not know how to catch a fish would be allowed to disgrace a fish by catching him.” To my eyes, that's what Ocearch does — disgrace fish.

Sure, many of the sharks they “release” — sluggish, disoriented, physically exhausted — do live, but they are known to have killed at least one, a fifteen-foot female named Maya. The tone-deaf yahoos in the crew are seen high fiving and shouting “she looks great!” while the stricken shark sinks into the deep, never to swim again.

These hucksters have nothing to do with Cape Cod.

They're just as likely to pop up in South Africa, the Mediterranean or Australia — they also tag alligators and turtles — or anyplace else Fischer can get his face, and his corporate sponsor's hats and T-shirts, on television.

Ocearch help no one but themselves and only exist because they can get on TV.

With two shark attacks here last summer — including the killing of Arthur Medici — and hundreds of individual sharks identified, DMF decided that the last thing we need is some outfit throwing large amounts of chum in our waters.

And the Cape is hardly the only place Ocearch have left locals bitter. In 2012 they got their permit yanked by the South Africa Environmental Affairs Department, according to ABC News. Locals there were outraged after a popular body boarder was killed in waters recently vacated by the Ocearch ship, whom locals claimed had used excessive chum to get their shark footage, then bolted the scene, only to have 20-year-old body boarder David Lilienfeld killed by a shark in their wake.

When Fischer issued a lame denial, saying his crew was gone days before the attack, and the inevitable “thoughts and prayers” statement on the “Shark Wranglers” Facebook page it was met with comments like: “Chumming must stop...” and “Murderers.”

So their chumming of an area popular with swimmers and surfers may have led directly to a human death and they've already killed at least one great white.

I say kicking these clowns three miles offshore is a good starting point but doesn't go far enough. Good riddance.

Elsewhere, Striper Cup, the big summer-long, coast-wide striped bass competition run by On The Water magazine in Falmouth has recently made the decision to go all catch and release.

“The decision was an easy one,” says OTW maximum editor Kevin Blinkoff. “Release mortality is a major issue with the striper stock.” I agree with Blinkoff on that. Indeed, it is estimated that many more stripers die after catch and improper release than the combined commercial catch in any given year. That needs to change.

Photos only — no dead fish. Bravo, Striper Cup!

Downhill Skating

Marissa Peri of West Yarmouth took one run at the Red Bull Crashed Ice event last weekend at Fenway Park, but her knee wasn't ready.

Peri, the Barnstable JV girls hockey coach, had won a wild card qualifying spot after time trials in Buffalo, New York, and Loon Mountain, New Hampshire, earlier this year. She then flew on her own dime to Jyvaskyla, Finland, her first time out of the States, to compete in the downhill race there, but injured her knee landing a jump.

“I have a pretty high pain tolerance,” says Peri — she is, after all, a hockey player. But after hyper-extending her left PCL (posterior cruciate ligament), she didn't want to risk a fall that would mean knee surgery and a painful 6-month rehab process.

While she did get to run the course at Fenway Park last weekend — which included jumps and a 6-foot drop — after only one run she realized she “did not have much range in my stride,” and “just knew,” not to push it. On-site doctors also advised her against continuing. She was disappointed, but remains pumped on the new sport.

After a strong finish in Finland, she's says she's already ranked #52 in the world in the growing sport.

As for future competitions, she says, “I'll keep going, one hundred percent.”

Curling

Cathy Offinger is excited. The Cape Cod Curling Club is turning 50 and celebrating with several events over the weekend of Feb. 22-24.

“It's a fun, happy event. I look forward to seeing people, including some former members who have been invited,” says Offinger, in her second year as Club president. She joined the Club in 2000 and enjoys it now more than ever.

The weekend will feature a series of bonspiels — as the games are called — competed among 16 teams made up of the club's roughly 300 members. There will be bonspiels on Friday and Saturday, and a cocktail party followed by a lavish dinner on Sunday afternoon. The club, located in Falmouth, welcomes new members and offers a variety of participation levels.

“Curling is a very social sport,” says Offinger. Indeed, after games, the losing team is compelled to clean the ice while the winners buy a round for the losers (the club has a full bar). For more info check out capecodcurling.org.

Skiing & Snowboarding

After yet another comeback podium place, the winningest American skier of all time retired this week.

Lindsey Vonn won 82 World Cup races, more than any woman who ever lived and just four less than Ingemar Stenmark's overall record of 86.

Stenmark, a famously reticent and shy Swede who Vonn admits she begged to attend via text message, was at the finish line in Are, Sweden, with flowers when Vonn crossed. She even wore a blue and yellow speed suit — Sweden's colors — to honor Stenmark and the course where, in 2007, she won her first skiing medals.

Taking bronze in the downhill in Sweden meant Vonn medalled at six different world championships, the only woman to do so. She also beat by two years her own record of being the oldest woman to win a medal at the worlds.

She is the only American woman to win an Olympic downhill gold medal.

Downhill is the big time of skiing. Racers fly (sometimes literally!) down a steep, twisting slope which is about as soft and edge-able as the surface of a bowling ball.

Vonn, after initially posting the fastest time, held on for the bronze medal in the final race of her career, hitting a top speed of 73 mph. I've owned automobiles that couldn't go that fast. Exerting control on a downhill ribbon of ice is beyond impressive. It takes courage that few humans possess.

Though only 34, Vonn had a long career; one filled with injuries and comeback cycles.

During last week's super G, she crashed after clipping a gate in midair and smashed down face first, knocking her wind out and leaving her with bruised rib and a black eye. Down for many minutes, she got up, refused the ski patrol sled and finished the course on her skis. She's had countless knee surgeries and once shattered her humerus bone so badly that she couldn't hold a pencil (a pencil!) for months afterward. She sometimes had to have her her ski poles taped to her hands in order to compete.

And compete she did.

Her idol was hippy wunderkind Picabo Street; her male counterpart is New Hampshire hellraiser Bode Miller; she feverishly chased Stenmark's record until her body broke again and again; her World Cup record my someday be eclipsed by Coloradan Mikaela Shiffrin, but today Lindsey Vonn stands alone — America's greatest skier.