Joe Rogan | Why Shark Fishing is Controversial w/Steve Rinella

It's supposed to be amazing fishing. The Catalina apparently is like the greatest Mako shark fishing in the world, which is a, here's a weird one. Shark fishing, all of a sudden you're an asshole. It used to be with jaws like you caught a shark, hey good get that fucking thing out of here, they're going to kill people. Now it's like you monster, sharks fin soup. Don't you care about that? Don't you know this global warming? Like everything is conflated. It's all like piled on together. Like what are you doing with a shark? You used to be able to buy Mako shark in a restaurant. Oh, you still see it, but there is a, there is, I saw Thresher shark the other day on a menu. I did a story, I did a magazine story about this long, long ago. It was like, it was right when I got out of school and it was like first like assignment I had to go write an article and I was writing it for outside magazine. And um, this is 19 years ago, man. And there's a thing called Mako madness and it was this thing in Montauk. Uh, it was funny about doing this. This is in 2000 and I got sent out there and had never ever been to New York and I didn't even go into the city. I just flew into wherever the hell I flew into and got a car and stupidly took a cab to I didn't understand the, I was very young. I didn't understand. Like I took a cab from like the airport out to Montauk. Oh my God. Yeah. How much did that cost? I don't remember. But I remember like when I had to turn my expenses, people were like, Oh, I'm what? No, I just, I didn't know. But anyways, it was funny cause uh, I remember driving along and seeing the, it was like the summer before and seeing this when it was like a year before and seeing the twin towers, you know, and it was like my first ever view and I never saw that place again. I never saw it again until after, but there's this thing called Mako madness and it was like a shark tournament. And traditionally had been like a contest to get the biggest shark and they would bet money on it. And there was like the general registration fee. So all these captains who had charter boats would join Mako madness and they would book clients on their boats for Mako madness. And when you had to, you had to pay some amount of money to, this probably still goes on. You had to pay some amount of money to register your boat to be in the contest. But the real money was in all these side bets called Calcutta's. And so you could, there was enough side betting going on around all the various captains that the biggest Mako could win a hundred thousand, couple hundred thousand dollars to catch the biggest Mako. But the sort of the fatal flaw in this tournament from a public perception standpoint would be that there was a category for just biggest shark and there was a category for like biggest Mako. So people going out like at a time, this is when, this is when shark populations were still, you know, and globally they're still on a decline, but there was still a lot of shark bycatch from swordfish, long lining and other things. And there was people were getting very worried about shark stocks and shark numbers. And at one time Mako madness was a lot more Makos, like people be registered Makos, but there had been some years where Mako madness had no Makos. People weren't bringing in a Mako. So everyone would go out and just make damn sure that like, I don't want to come back empty. So they would catch a blue shark. Because if no one caught a Mako, you still might get biggest shark from catching a blue shark. And at the end of this thing, man, they had dumpsters. They were not dumpsters. They had, they would fill a dumpster with blue sharks. And no one would eat it. Dude, it would, no, it would go into a dumpster. You can eat blue shark. Yeah. Well, you can, they're high in urea and just, you know, it's like everything else. Like, yes, you can. So Mako is the most edible? Mako Thresher. Can you eat a great white? You know what's funny about great whites is there's a guy, there's a writer I love and he does all these fisheries guide books named Vic Dunaway. I don't know if he's dead or alive, but I got all of his books. He's got like Gulf Coast, Pacific Ocean, Atlantic coast. He does these books, like, it's like all the fish that you're likely to catch, kind of like how to catch them. Then he, what I like about it, he's got like a quality, food quality section and his food quality sections are really funny. And like the highest praise is he can give something like excellent or one of the best, right? So if you look up snook, it'll be like one of the best. His headline for great, I lurked in great white shark, it says don't even ask. But people feel that they'd be good because salmon shark are good. They used to call them poor beagles. Like salmon shark have a very good reputation and Makos have a good reputation and Threshers have market value. And there's other sharks in other areas that have market value, but those ones are like, are ones that are popular table fare. The assumption is that white, that great white sharks would probably be good. It must be somebody's eating one. Oh, I'm sure there's plenty of people that have eaten them. But at this Mako madness thing, I can't remember the point I was getting at. What the hell was I driving at by talking about Mako madness? Oh, in this article, I got into like the history of where like shark hunting and killing sharks came from is you're familiar with Jaws, right? Well, sort of the shark fisherman character in Jaws is based on this like very real dude Frank Mundus and Frank Mundus used to fish out of Montauk. And at a time Montauk was his premier destination for people catching swordfish and big blue fin tuna. And as those big pelagic fisheries had collapsed from overfishing in the seventies, Frank Mundus, he'd go out and he'd just go out and find a, you know, he'd go out famously, he'd go out and find a beach whale or not a beach whale, but a floating dead whale. And he'd anchor up on that whale and catch big ass great whites. And then come in and hang the bloody carcass up on the docks. And he made necklaces with tooth sharks and shit. And he became like the monster man or something or the monster hunter and started booking all these crazy trips where tourists would come to be like, holy shit, I want to go kill a big monster. And he's credited with having created this like culture of like going out and getting yeah, that's him. That's Frank Mundus. Let me see that picture up or left. Dude. So yeah, he kind of like built this idea of like sharks. Shark conning and book in shark bite and his forearm go back to that. That'd be interesting. Frank Mundus. For him. Oh, something took a bite out of that motherfucker. Yeah. So he's got the necklace, the dead shark and Frank Mundus kind of like, like spawned this sort of thing where you'd want to go out and catch a big shark and hang it up and then throw it in a dumpster. Wow. And people look at like, when people look at that history, they look at it being is like, in some ways, Mundus and shark hunting was symptomatic of declining fisheries. Look at that picture of him and the dude from the movie. They're so similar. Look at that. The black and white and the color next to each other. Look at that. Oh yeah. What was that guy's name? The guy in the movie? Can't remember. What was the actor's name? That guy was fucking awesome. What a great scene. You know Mo Fallon? Yeah. That's still his favorite movie I think. It's great. He loves Jaws. It's a great movie. It's interesting that the narrative... The next time you see him, have him convince you that Jaws is the greatest movie ever. It's a great movie. It's a great movie. Richard Trifuss. I mean, come on. The narrative of sharks fin soup and sharks being, you know, something that we need to protect that sort of, it's a new thing. It only existed over the last decade or so. I think so. Yeah. It used to be if you caught a shark, like good for you. You keeping it from killing someone who's swimming or someone who's surfing. The idea of sharks fin soup and it's lure was driven home to me one time when we were in Berkeley and we were at a boat launch and we'd come off fishing and we'd been out fishing for leopard sharks. Remember the Life Aquatic? That's a good movie. Do you like his stuff or no? Bill Murray? Love him. No, I mean like the director Anderson. Oh, what has he done besides that? Fucking World Ten of Moms. Oh, okay. Yeah, I like that. Yeah. I think his masterpiece is the Life Aquatic. But in there they got the famous shark and there's the jaguar shark, which is a good idea for a shark. I don't think it exists, but there are leopard sharks and we're fishing for leopard sharks and we came back to the boat launch and there's a dumpster there. And everybody cleans their fish and throws the fish guts in the dumpster. And I remember there was a gentleman digging through the dumpster, getting out leopard shark fins and heads and stuff. And I took pity on him. I thought that he was acting out of some sort of desperation. And I said, hey man, do you want like a nice filet? I'd be happy to give you a filet. He's like, no, just the fins. Just to make soup? Yeah. Yeah. Have you ever had it? No. I've had it. Shark fin soup? Yeah. Did you enjoy it? It was weird. It was weird. It was like, it's okay. It's not worth eradicating a fucking entire species for. No, it's a little disgusting. It's a little disgusting. And I'm always reluctant to over simplify things around harvest and animals and stuff because I think people can take it too far. But if you've seen footage of people cutting fins and dumping the sharks in the water and kicking the sharks off the deck into the water, and I think, but it speaks to something. I think that seeing like live finless sharks going into the water speaks to something about just your level of care. Do you know what I mean? Like, whether you view something as sacred or not, it's hard to see that the individual engaging in that is viewing it as sacred. And there's a lot of stories about even like swordfish captains burning blue sharks and stuff in effigy because they lose so much of their swordfish catch the blue sharks. But to see people kicking them off, it speaks to something about animal suffering. It speaks to something about like, what is that person's view of the resource? To how do they respect it? But it also speaks to like a general thing where you don't see things wasted. And my understanding about like one of the things that slowed in US waters, one of the things that slowed finning was just used to be able to go out and you could fill your hold full of just shark parts. If you were a fishing cap, then you could just be like, oh, I'm just going to keep the fins. And eventually they made it. I'm sure someone will correct me if I'm wrong here. I don't think I am. They eventually made it that whatever you have for shark materials in your boat on a commercial operation, only a certain percentage can be comprised of fins. And since when you're on a commercial vessel, your hold, like the way where you keep iced fish is finite, it's limited, it wanted to be not worth it. Because let's say only like 30% of your shark parts could be shark fins and you had to keep the rest. It wasn't worth it to fill your hold full of like shark meat. And so it sort of de-incentivize people to go out and fin in US waters. That makes sense. I had it a long time ago. I had it back in probably the 90s at a Chinese restaurant. In the US or overseas? In the US.