Shark Fishing with Team Rebel

Tuesday evening I had the pleasure of going shark fishing with members of the Team Rebel Fishing Club.

We arrived at Spanish River Beach in Boca Raton around 6:30 p.m. and had a great view of the sun setting as people left the beach.

Just after sundown, Zach Miller and his fellow teammates set up their fishing poles and canoed out to drop their bait, frozen Blue Fish.

It wasn’t long before they caught their first shark of the night and I got my first jolt of adrenalin.  We all sprinted down to the shore to find an estimated 5-foot, male, Spinner Shark.

Zach Miller, 23, and founder of Team Rebel, assured me that every shark caught is released back into the water within minutes of it being pulled ashore.

Tuesday evening Team Rebel was “doing the right thing,” as Miller stated, by tagging the Spinner Sharks they caught and sending the information back to the National Ocean and Atmospheric Association to aid in their research of shark migration.

Overall, shark fishing was an experience I will never forget. Being out there with the members of Team Rebel gave me a different outlook on what it really is that these shark fishermen are doing. They aren’t throwing fish guts all over the water to attract sharks, they aren’t fishing for sharks while people are at the beach, let alone in the water, and they certainly aren’t killing nor harming these sharks.

  

I hope to someday get the chance to go shark fishing again and help NOAA’s Apex Predators Program.