Two shark divers freed 19 sharks from a longline. They are experiencing 5 years in prison

Two many years in the past, a captain and mate of a Jupiter-centered shark diving boat stopped about two miles into their trip getting 6 visitors out to swim with the apex predators.

For the duration of the August 2020 charter, they arrived across a commercial fishing longline — a controversial piece of angling gear consisting of in some cases up to various miles of monofilament line, weights and hooks, designed with the function of snagging dozens of fish at a time.

The adult males, boat captain John R. Moore Jr., 56, and mate Tanner Mansell, 29, gathered up the 3 miles of line and freed 19 sharks and a Goliath grouper, a point out-shielded species. The three-hour work was carried out with the support of their constitution travellers, telling them the line was an abandoned “ghost set” of line, U.S. Attorney’s Office prosecutors reported.

Two many years later on, a grand jury indicted Moore and Mansell of theft of industrial fishing equipment in federal waters. A jury convicted the men last 7 days, and they now experience five a long time each individual in federal prison. The line, prosecutors mentioned, belonged to a commercial fishing operator that was accredited to catch all the species of shark that ended up hooked that working day.

Lawyers for Moore and Mansell declined to comment on the case prior to the scheduled Feb. 9 sentencing, but both equally males taken care of in the course of their trial they considered the longline was an unlawful setup and their only intent was to absolutely free the fish, not steal the equipment.

The two adult men have decades of practical experience performing on the h2o. Moore was a previous professional fisherman, in accordance to federal prosecutors. Moreover, Mansell is a mentioned underwater photographer and dealt with sharks for a film shoot of the famous Shark 7 days series on the Discovery Channel in 2021.

His social media accounts are crammed with illustrations or photos of sharks he photographed about the environment, as very well as messages touting shark conservation.

But federal prosecutors said the pair really should have been nicely knowledgeable that the longline they dealt with and eventually introduced back again to shore was authentic. It was hooked up to a substantial orange buoy clearly marked with the identify of the vessel to which it belonged, the Day Boat III, prosecutors reported.

Tale proceeds

In accordance to prosecutors, a Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Fee officer watched as Moore’s boat entered the Jupiter Inlet and stopped the vessel. Moore advised the officer the line was an illegal shark fishing established, prosecutors said. The buoy — “which would have set up the evident legality of the shark fishing effort” — was absent, prosecutors explained in a statement.

The FWC officer explained to Moore and Mansell to go away the line, hooks and weights on the dock for evidence, but prosecutors mentioned the pair as a substitute cut up the line and threw all the gear into a dumpster.

“Evidence at demo proven that the gear on your own price the vessel owner somewhere around $1,300, and the value of the misplaced sharks amounted to quite a few thousand pounds, which represented a substantial portion of the money that would be paid out to the fishermen,” the prosecutors stated.

Moore and Mansell, who their lawyers say are not in federal custody, not only face prison time, but also fines up to $250,000 apiece.