Latest / Conservation Stories / Great Whites in the Gulf: The Return of an Icon

Transcript

Great Whites in the Gulf: The Return of an Icon · Conservation Stories

• 0:00
  Speaker A: Hello, I'm Dusty Timmons with Conservation Stories and I recently was afforded the opportunity to go to the Hunt Fish Podcast Summit held outside of Houston and interview a number of venturing people for the conservation stories that you'll be hearing over the next couple of weeks. Included in these are people from all walks of life that are involved in conservation and charitable organizations that I feel will be really interesting. I hope you enjoy the podcast as much as I enjoyed recording the interviews for you.
• 0:29
  Speaker B: You.
• 0:30
  Speaker A: I'm here this morning with Chester Moore with the Gulf Great White Society. Chester Moore is an award winning wildlife journalist and lifelong resident of the south of Southeast Texas. And Chester, tell me a little bit about the Gulf Great White Society.
• 0:44
  Speaker B: So the Gulf Great White Shark Society is something I started last year, actually. It's fairly new, already have almost 900 members, which is really cool. And it's a brand platform I've created to raise awareness of the return of great whites to the Gulf and also other large sharks in the Gulf. A lot of those sharks have different conservation needs and things and like, you know, your black tip spinners, even bulls and stuff like that closer to shore, when you get into your tigers or bigger hammerheads, your makos, there's a lot of different conservation issues. We're just trying to raise awareness, empower people with information and let them know that the ocean's a beautiful place, sharks are important part of the ecosystem, and the great white is back in the Gulf. They were never completely gone. But it was controversial that there were even great whites in the Gulf as recently as 20 years ago.
• 1:33
  Speaker A: But I was fixing to say I did not know that there were great whites in the Gulf.
• 1:36
  Speaker B: So me being a wildlife nerd my entire life obsessed with these things, a little budding wildlife journalist. Before I knew what that was, I was reading everything I could on everything wildlife, whether it's sports of Field magazine or the shark books, the library. And I read every one of them that ever showed up in southeast Texas and I had them all. And I remember seeing early notes of whites in the Gulf and I thought, well, if they're at the Atlantic, why wouldn't they come in the Gulf? You know, you'd see little pictures in books, it would say, range occasionally, Gulf, Bahamas or whatever like that, or in the Caribbean. And a friend of mine tonight at the Huntvish podcast, and we're playing a documentary that I produced on my YouTube channel called Gulf Great White Return of an Icon. And a friend of mine called me in 2005 from a satellite phone. He was 60 miles out at a rig off Sabine Pass in Texas, Louisiana border. And he calls me freaked out. Chester, what's the difference between a mako's teeth and a great white's? Because a great white and a mako are really close cousins. And at about, you know, a younger size, a great white and a mako look pretty close, but great white keep getting bigger and bigger and bigger. And I said, well, a mako's got jangly teeth and a great white's got perfect triangles. Oh my God, I'm looking at a great white shark right now. So I took that information. I found some old data from the 50s of some great whites caught in the Gulf and wrote an article about it for Tide magazine. It was controversial. It won an award. It did. It won an award that year. But the readership was, oh, it's B.S. blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah blah. Well, a group called O Search about six or seven years ago started putting satellite tags in great whites. And guess what? They started showing up around Panama City, Florida, Biloxi, Mississippi. So they were moving in the winter. You'd see they come down into the Gulf. And so I followed that story for a long time. And the one that really changed the whole dynamic was in 2023 off Hilton Head, South Carolina, a great white shark was tagged by Captain Chipmichael of Outkast Sport Fishing, along with Dr. Megan Winton of the Atlantic White Star Conservancy. It was their tags he partners with them. They named it Lee Beth after a daughter of one of his clients that had passed away. And they put her in the system. December I was the 6th to the 8th or something. Early December 2023, February 26, 2024. She is 100 yards from the beach at South Padre Island, Texas.
• 4:03
  Speaker A: Holy cow.
• 4:05
  Speaker B: And that day I bought the domain gulfgreatwhites.com and I said, it's all about the change. I said, I'm gonna plant my flag. I said, I've been doing this when everybody thought I was crazy. No one's gonna be a Johnny come lately. We're gonna be. I'm gonna, I'm be the flag bearer for great whites in the Gulf, right? And so I have a blog. It's already won awards and the website's won awards because we've been putting out this unique content on great whites in the Gulf of Lord Sharks. And what was so cool is my buddy who saw the white, like about a week after she showed up Padres, she kind of disappeared. I got up at like 6:30 in the morning. I Had a text. It was a screenshot from that group. It's called Sharktivity, the app. And it's her screenshot of her current location. He said, chester, they thought we were crazy. 20 years ago, she's about five or 10 miles from the rig. I saw the white 20 years ago. She was right there in that same zone of the Gulf.
• 4:53
  Speaker A: Wow.
• 4:53
  Speaker B: So that was really cool. So that got it going. I got to go up to Cape Cod with the Atlantic white shark conservants. Me and Paul Fuszynski, we got to follow great whites around, which was unbelievable. Got to interview Dr. Greg Schomall, one of the top shark scientists in the world. He's done documentary and also, you know, 20 something years ago I got to go cage diving with whites in the Pacific.
• 5:15
  Speaker A: Oh man.
• 5:16
  Speaker B: So it was one of those moments because I'm a kid, man, Dusty from a lower middle income house in West Orange, Texas. There was no expectation of something like this. You might as well have told me I was going to be on Mars. But my parents were supportive. I have faith in God and I work hard. You might be as talented as me. You ain't outworking me. They ain't happening. I'm gonna go, I'm gonna go for it. You know what I mean?
• 5:39
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 5:40
  Speaker B: So I sunk my teeth into it like a pit bull on a hog's ear, a catch dog, you know, and somehow ended up here. And I just felt so blessed and humble that here is this kid who's still a kid and I'm looking over and there's a great white right there and I'm doing a documentary on it. Mind blowing. So we're trying to also, I try to facilitate, use this to inspire. We started a little scholarship. We gave our first scholarship away. Marina Wilson won our first Gulf Great White Shark Society scholarship.
• 6:08
  Speaker A: That's cool.
• 6:09
  Speaker B: We're going to give it to first and second year marine biology students and we're hoping to expand that this year, a little more money. And we held our first meeting and if you become a member, you go subscribe to my blog@gulfgreatwhites.com subscribe that means I collect your email address there. Once a month you'll get a special email that the people in the public part of the blog can't get. You'll get a decal and you'll get all this cool information on great white sharks. Exclusive stuff that is really cool.
• 6:36
  Speaker A: What do you think? Is there any information on what's driving their return or let's, I mean, whether they Be. Let's, let's say they've been gone. Yeah, let's. Let's say, you know, it's a, the ocean's a big place. The, the Gulf is a big place.
• 6:49
  Speaker B: Sure.
• 6:50
  Speaker A: They probably, you know, maybe they weren't gone.
• 6:52
  Speaker B: Maybe they were, they weren't completely gone.
• 6:53
  Speaker A: What's driving the, the resurgence of them?
• 6:58
  Speaker B: Okay, so great whites are a very complex species to manage because it takes 25 to 30 years to reach sexual maturity for a female. Now, can you imagine 25 to 30 years in the ocean with hooks everywhere and all this kind of stuff?
• 7:16
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 7:16
  Speaker B: So they, they, did they. The Atlantic population was down 80% by the mid-90s. And they started. Harvest was banned in 1997. And then a bunch of gill nets were taken off the Gulf coast and that helped. So you're having a generation of sharks aren't being caught and killed as much. Yeah, there's some illegal harvest. There's, you know, like long line harvesting. The Gulf, that stuff happens. And so that's the main driver. And I think we're just learning that this stuff is kind of going back to maybe where it used to be a little bit, you know.
• 7:47
  Speaker A: Yeah, that's, I mean, that's so cool.
• 7:50
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 7:50
  Speaker A: I have spent limited amount of time in the Gulf. I've actually, I've been in, I've touched my feet in, in all the waters, but that's about as cool. Like, like that's good enough for me, you know, splashing on me. But watching the, you know, looking at, going to South Padre island and seeing a great white shark is just, that's, that, that just is mind numbing to me.
• 8:14
  Speaker B: It's the coolest thing in the world to me. But what's interesting is a lot of people have a lot of misunderstandings about sharks. So there was a bull shark attack about maybe six weeks, two months after she showed up there. And all of a sudden people on social media, oh, it's the great white shark attacking people. It's a freaking bull shark. It is not. I said that sharks in Nova Scotia right now. Yeah. Literally. I had to do an article. I've had to correct stories. This shark is in Canada. She's not there. Unless you swam overnight and came back.
• 8:44
  Speaker A: You know, they're fast, but not quite that fast. Yeah.
• 8:46
  Speaker B: So there's a lot of misinformation, a lot of sharks out there. And you know, Cape Cod had a fatal attack a few years back, right? Yeah. But there's people on that beach every day and there's a mini White sharks there now. Many.
• 9:00
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 9:00
  Speaker B: Yeah. So it's interesting. There's certainly a potential danger, but they're an important part of our ecosystem, keeping things balanced. And they're the most famous. There's not, there's not a wolf week. Yeah, they ain't a whitetail week.
• 9:13
  Speaker A: Nope.
• 9:13
  Speaker B: There sure is a Shark Week.
• 9:14
  Speaker A: Yes, there is.
• 9:15
  Speaker B: And it's the most famous animal in the world is a great white shark.
• 9:18
  Speaker A: I am one of those people that when Shark Week rolls around, I block off time and I watch Shark Week.
• 9:24
  Speaker B: Yeah. Well, take a good way to keep up with us. You can go subscribe@gulfgreatwhites.com it's free. Become a member and go to Ulfgreatwhite Shark Society on Instagram. I have an Instagram feed. We do too. And we go. We can watch the documentary at the website. You can get the blogs. I probably have two blogs post a week go up about sharks.
• 9:44
  Speaker A: Well, we get to, we get to be the fortunate ones to watch the. We get to watch that documentary.
• 9:47
  Speaker B: Yeah, I'm excited. I love watching it with people because I love seeing it again. Other people's eyes. Yeah, that's fun.
• 9:51
  Speaker A: Well, that's, you know, the, you know, I'm about as far away from the ocean as you can get without being right smack in the middle.
• 9:59
  Speaker B: Lubbock, right?
• 9:59
  Speaker A: Yes.
• 10:00
  Speaker B: Yeah. Lubbock isn't exactly a coastal town.
• 10:02
  Speaker A: Well, no, but I was, you know, the standard joke is that it's right. It's right in the middle of the best fishing and honey in the world. It's 700 miles any direction. And we are, I mean, to be fair.
• 10:12
  Speaker B: Yeah, for sure.
• 10:13
  Speaker A: You know, you can drive eight hours to the ghost to the, to the coast or you can drive 8 hours Northern Colorado and go fly fishing.
• 10:19
  Speaker B: I mean, there you go.
• 10:20
  Speaker A: Good stuff, you know, eight hours put you in some good quail hunting in, you know, in eastern Arizona. Hunting some scalies and some gambles back over there. But you know, it's it. So it doesn't lend it. You know, my life has not lent itself to being a fisheries biologist. My, my extent to fisheries information is sure. You know where the black. Where do the black bass hang out?
• 10:39
  Speaker B: Nothing wrong with that either. I'm trying to figure it out this morning.
• 10:42
  Speaker A: Yes. Yeah, well, I was, I was doing pretty good until I lost that one soft bait I had.
• 10:47
  Speaker B: Yeah, well, I'm fly fishing only here at this event and this morning I had my small one weight.
• 10:52
  Speaker A: Okay. I want to, I want to know how you're doing it. That wind's blowing about 30 miles.
• 10:55
  Speaker B: It's rough, but I had a pretty good fish hit on that one way that doubled over. But it got caught in the moss.
• 11:00
  Speaker A: Yes.
• 11:01
  Speaker B: Yeah, but it was swimming with the moss on it and I think it was probably about 3 pound. Bass finally broke my fly off for about 3 minutes and I'm like, oh man, it's messed up.
• 11:10
  Speaker A: So this, this is a cool place. But you know, but sharks have always been, I mean there, there is a, to me, there's always been a romance and allure about, about learning about them.
• 11:23
  Speaker B: Oh yeah.
• 11:24
  Speaker A: You know, I am way too much of a risk averse person to, to, you know, go after and do things. Yeah. I mean it's just on the list of things that, that I've got on my bucket list. Swimming with sharks.
• 11:37
  Speaker B: Not there. Yeah.
• 11:38
  Speaker A: Okay. You know, but also, but I like to learn things and I love to learn about sharks and I love to learn about, you know, what's, what's in the ocean. I mean, you know, the ocean is probably the. I heard somebody say one time that we know more about the surface of the moon than we do about the, for the ocean.
• 11:54
  Speaker B: Yeah, I've heard stuff like that as well. You know, and there's a lot of mysteries there, really. I mean even with sharks like nobody but people kind of thought, as Dr. Greg Schomall said, he said in the documentary people, we thought white sharks were a fairly coastal species, but we found some of them just go out 3,000ft of water and hang out for a while.
• 12:13
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 12:13
  Speaker B: Why? We don't know yet.
• 12:15
  Speaker A: Yeah. And it's just, you know, what, do you know what's down there that you're feeding on? Yeah.
• 12:19
  Speaker B: It's so cool.
• 12:21
  Speaker A: And it's, it. I mean, you know, the, I think the interesting thing is if you watch, you know, with the advent of streaming services now you can go back and watch, you know, shark documentaries from the 80s. Yeah. And you go back and you look at that and then you go back and watch one from the 90s. Like, wait a second, they just said this. Yeah. And you know, the amount that we're
• 12:42
  Speaker B: still learning, there's a great one. So one of my two of my heroes are a couple. One of them still alive and Ron Taylor and Valerie Taylor. Ron passed away. Valerie still alive. So he's like 89 now. They were the ones that got all the first images and video of white sharks.
• 12:56
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 12:56
  Speaker B: And they're, they're actually the ones that got the live shark footage that shows up in Jaws.
• 13:01
  Speaker A: No kidding.
• 13:02
  Speaker B: Yeah. And they're images of white sharks. So somebody remastered a documentary they were part of called White Water. No, Blue Water, White Death. It came out before Jaws and it's about looking for great white sharks. It is incredible. And it's changed so much because they go to a whaling vessel to look for one of a whale that they had left over or something like that. You couldn't do that today.
• 13:26
  Speaker A: No.
• 13:26
  Speaker B: You know, but it shows how times change and things change. Understand, exchange.
• 13:30
  Speaker A: Yeah. You know, and it's in, you know, the, the when you're trying to manage and conserve a species, you know, you have to know a certain amount about the species because if you make the wrong call on, make the wrong conservation effort, you may actually hurt more than you're helping.
• 13:48
  Speaker B: Sure.
• 13:49
  Speaker A: You know, and you want. I think everybody's familiar with the air Jaws, you know, in South Africa, where
• 13:53
  Speaker B: they go, I saw that out of
• 13:55
  Speaker A: the water and stuff like that.
• 13:56
  Speaker B: I saw that in California.
• 13:57
  Speaker A: Did you really?
• 13:57
  Speaker B: In our cage dive, I saw four whites breach.
• 14:00
  Speaker A: Oh my God.
• 14:00
  Speaker B: It was unbelievable.
• 14:02
  Speaker A: Yeah, that is incredible.
• 14:03
  Speaker B: It was about two years after White Air Jaws come out.
• 14:06
  Speaker A: No kidding.
• 14:06
  Speaker B: So I got to see this right after and I was just mind blown. I saw that happen. I saw an 18 foot great white jump out of the water in the fair lines.
• 14:12
  Speaker A: Oh, man. I think I, I mean there would be something come out of me if I saw anything. Know what it is?
• 14:21
  Speaker B: It was amazing.
• 14:23
  Speaker A: So in, in general, how are sharks in general doing both globally and in locally as in the Gulf?
• 14:32
  Speaker B: Well, in the Gulf a lot this is a problem. A lot of fishermen don't like shark. A lot of sharks have come back in larger numbers. Black tip spinners, Atlantic sharp nose, little guy. We call them sand sharks, even bulls, stuff like that. A lot of them are coming back in bigger numbers and they're, you know, people are reeling into tarpon and here comes, you know, bull shark.
• 14:50
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 14:50
  Speaker B: Or snapper or they eat their snapper. There's a lot of, there's a thing called the Shark act people are looking at, to try to maybe allow more harvest to some sharks. But that's why the Gulf, the Gulf White Shark Society is not a political lobbying group. It's an awareness raising thing. But one of the awareness I want to raise that. That's a different issue than white sharks and some of these big sharks. People even know we have like silky sharks and stuff.
• 15:12
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 15:13
  Speaker B: That's a different management thing.
• 15:14
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 15:15
  Speaker B: You can't go harvesting an animal in recovery that has 30 years before it's mature.
• 15:20
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 15:21
  Speaker B: You know, so it's a different issue. So I'm trying to let people. Make people realize. But some sharks are recovering pretty well, and some sharks aren't doing the lot. There's over 100 million sharks a year harvested by commercial harvesters in the world.
• 15:34
  Speaker A: Good night.
• 15:35
  Speaker B: Yeah. A lot of that's the thinning issue.
• 15:37
  Speaker A: Right.
• 15:37
  Speaker B: Where they take them. And when I was in Asia, I got to see shark fins hanging up in a market.
• 15:42
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 15:42
  Speaker B: You know, and they fin the sharks and they. In this. That's still an issue.
• 15:47
  Speaker A: Yeah. I mean, that's. And that's gonna continue to be an issue.
• 15:51
  Speaker B: I found a paper where there's illegal white shark trade in parts in Mexico.
• 15:58
  Speaker A: Really?
• 15:59
  Speaker B: And I started looking at some things online, and I might have found some other illegal white shark stuff online. I'm waiting for some legal pie people to give me what's really going on. Very ambiguous laws on some of this.
• 16:11
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 16:12
  Speaker B: So just sort of digging in stories and stuff. You come across there might be more illegal stuff than we see out here.
• 16:16
  Speaker A: Yeah, well, that's the. The, you know, that's the trick about illegal stuff is it's done in the dark.
• 16:23
  Speaker B: Yep. It's always done in the COVID of darkness.
• 16:25
  Speaker A: You've got to be aware of that stuff. And, you know, from a. A numbers perspective, are great or great whites globally making that kind of coming back a little.
• 16:36
  Speaker B: Well, they're coming back in the Atlantic Basin, Mason. Yeah. But there's weird. Weird stuff happening. Like in South Africa, there's orcas eating them.
• 16:43
  Speaker A: Yes. I've seen.
• 16:44
  Speaker B: So there's a lot of stuff. Another mystery. What's going on? You know, like, has.
• 16:48
  Speaker A: It has. You know, I saw that. And they're like.
• 16:50
  Speaker B: So my. My focus has been on what's happening in the Gulf in the Atlantic part that connects to it.
• 16:56
  Speaker A: Right.
• 16:57
  Speaker B: And I'm Right. Every once a while, I'll have something on the blog about somewhere else, but I'm kind of really focused on this one story.
• 17:02
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 17:02
  Speaker B: Because it's complex enough, you know.
• 17:05
  Speaker A: It is.
• 17:05
  Speaker B: It's complex enough because you've got a lot of.
• 17:07
  Speaker A: You mean you've got. You know, we. Obviously, there's a lot of Gulf of natural Gas. Oil gas production.
• 17:15
  Speaker B: Oh, yeah. That's where I have a database of sightings. These are not tag fish. These are just. People have seen them.
• 17:21
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 17:22
  Speaker B: Going back to the 50s. I got about. Probably 80 in there, and about 20 of them are probably oil platform workers. Yeah, we've seen them.
• 17:31
  Speaker A: Well, with the A lot of, you know, there's. The advancement of technology has been a real boom. People that are tracking sharks.
• 17:39
  Speaker B: Yeah. Oh, yeah.
• 17:39
  Speaker A: Because the ability to put a tag on a shark, you know, when it comes up the surface, it releases the data. And here's where I've been, you know, and that's a whole lot more than what we could do, you know, 20, even. Even 10 years ago, we can do. I mean, you know, they've got radio. Radio collars. They put on bobwhite quail now.
• 17:56
  Speaker B: Oh, yeah.
• 17:57
  Speaker A: It doesn't affect them. And, you know, it'll hang on there for. And, you know, you. So if you can be able to do that. Are we seeing the tag numbers coming back in? What is. Isn't there. Isn't there a website you can go and you can like.
• 18:11
  Speaker B: So there are several. But the two that I really follow are Shark Tracker by ocearch and then sharktivity by the Atlantic White Shark Conservancy. Ocearch tags several kind of sharks, a lot of great whites, kind of their focus, but makos and other stuff, too. Atlantic white sharks pretty much only tagging great whites, and they do it off of Cape Cod, Hilton Head, different areas. And so the Lee Beth, the one that popped up, South Padre, Atlantic white shark. But O Search is the one that. The first ones popping up in the Gulf, both doing great work and just really great apps. And it's my daughter's. Thinks it's really cool to look at certain sharks now. So that's made her have a little more interest in it and. But yeah, so there's the satellite tags are the ones that you get like an update quickly and you have this. But what happens is it's on the dorsal and the satellite tag clears the surface and makes a connection with the satellite. So that's not happening. It's not tracking necessarily all the time.
• 19:08
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 19:08
  Speaker B: But there are acoustic tracks on there and these acoustic. There are acoustic receiver stations all up along the coast. And every few months or every year or so, they pull the data off those and give them to scientists in a database. And look up there. If any of their fish showed up, it might be a manta ray, it might be a sea turtle or a great white.
• 19:25
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 19:26
  Speaker B: And so these sharks that most of these groups are taking also have those on them as well. And some of those are popping up in places that aren't on the app.
• 19:33
  Speaker A: Oh, wow.
• 19:33
  Speaker B: Yeah. There's a place called the Flower Gardens National Marine sanctuary. It's about 120 miles off Galveston.
• 19:38
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 19:39
  Speaker B: And there were, I think 4 or 5 of the ocean great whites that popped up there.
• 19:42
  Speaker A: Wow.
• 19:43
  Speaker B: Yeah. From a set. From the. From the. The acoustic tax.
• 19:47
  Speaker A: That's very interesting to see because I don't remember as a kid ever being told that there were. You know, I was actually told there's not any great whites in the gulf.
• 19:59
  Speaker B: I have another YouTube video up on great whites in the gulf because some guys, there's a guide service out of Destin that's. They've caught them in the fort in Navarre beach. And I have people telling me straight up that they, you know, I grew up thinking there were no great whites. I can tell you. I can look at comments right now on my phone. I'm looking. They're like, no, there are no great whites. That kind of stuff.
• 20:21
  Speaker A: Well, that's. That's the thing about it. It's like there's habitat for them. Then has. What is. What was a con. What would be a con? Like, if you could. If you could pick one conservation major for the Gulf to. To. To help the. Help the gulf and its population. Great work. What would you. What would that one be? You know, put you on the spot and make you.
• 20:45
  Speaker B: You can't harvest them. It's illegal to harvest and it's already in place. I would think there needs to be more done on illegal longlining from foreign vessels. Let's either. Let's put a torpedo in them or scare a few of them to death or arrest some people. There's some illegal fishing going on that's causing some problems.
• 21:03
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 21:03
  Speaker B: That's, you know, that's not just for whites, but sharks in general.
• 21:08
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 21:08
  Speaker B: Big shark. Because they're out in the open ocean where some of these bigger ones might be.
• 21:11
  Speaker A: Yeah. You know, but one of the things that makes it tough, too is when you have. You have illegal fishing and you have a, you know, a government that is okay with that.
• 21:22
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 21:22
  Speaker A: You know, that makes managing it difficult because it's a, you know, it's a variable. You can't manager as a conservationist. You can't really.
• 21:30
  Speaker B: You can go to dozens of governments, maybe many dozens of governments okay with it. You know, Ocearch went to Europe this summer to do an expedition looking for great whites in the Mediterranean. I think they found one shark and it was a blue shark. Wow. They were like. It's pretty much was barren.
• 21:47
  Speaker A: Golly.
• 21:47
  Speaker B: You know, because of all the, you know, all the fishing. You know, we do a lot of things wrong in America.
• 21:53
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 21:53
  Speaker B: But we're due. Compared to most places with wildlife and fisheries. We do an incredible job.
• 21:58
  Speaker A: Yeah, we really do. I mean, there's been. You know, that's the interesting thing about America. And I think it has a lot to do with the amount of public land we have as a country, because our public land model is. Is unique.
• 22:10
  Speaker B: Oh. I mean, well, we live in Texas, which is like, opposite.
• 22:13
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 22:14
  Speaker B: We have 97% private land.
• 22:15
  Speaker A: Right. I know, but I mean, but, you know, I live 30 minutes from New Mexico.
• 22:19
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 22:20
  Speaker A: And I can leave my house and in 45 minutes, I can be in a million acres of state and federal land. Yeah.
• 22:26
  Speaker B: I live in the part of the state of Texas that has most of the public land.
• 22:30
  Speaker A: Right in East Texas. Yep.
• 22:31
  Speaker B: National forest and all that.
• 22:33
  Speaker A: Yep.
• 22:33
  Speaker B: And some refuges right by me. And it's a different thing. And I think we have a thing that's called the North American Model of wildlife conservation. And they didn't think of it as a model to launch it, but a guy named Valerius Geist kind of put it together, what it is, and we kind of use as a guideline now. And it's this idea that wildlife's a public trust, that public has access to it. We should base it on scientific principles. And if that includes fishing and hunting, that's great.
• 23:00
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 23:00
  Speaker B: And if that means we hold back a little bit on that because of science, that's great, too.
• 23:03
  Speaker A: Yep.
• 23:04
  Speaker B: And that's. And I get chills thinking about what we've done here in America with wildlife, and it's incredible. And there's things we've not done right. But compared to a lot of most places on the planet, we do really well.
• 23:16
  Speaker A: Yeah. That's. I mean, you look at, you know, the one that has always stuck out to me as far as the conservation model is, and it's. They're not a con. They're not a native species to us,
• 23:26
  Speaker B: but have access to year. Oh, yeah.
• 23:27
  Speaker A: I believe that there's more access deer in Texas than there are where they're actually native.
• 23:32
  Speaker B: Yeah. For sure.
• 23:33
  Speaker A: You know, you go. And it's just, you know, we've.
• 23:36
  Speaker B: They've shipped them. They've shipped blackbuck antelope from Texas. From Texas. Back.
• 23:41
  Speaker A: Back. Yeah.
• 23:42
  Speaker B: That's happened in Pakistan.
• 23:44
  Speaker A: Yeah. It's. It's. It's. It's wild, what we've done. And, you know, the wheel, you know, the North American model has protected and has rescued a number of species. I mean, it hadn't done, you know, it's.
• 23:56
  Speaker B: I do a lot.
• 23:57
  Speaker A: Perfect.
• 23:58
  Speaker B: No, but it's.
• 23:58
  Speaker A: I mean, it's not perfect, but, you know, but there's.
• 24:01
  Speaker B: The last perfect thing on the planet was hung to a cross.
• 24:04
  Speaker A: That's exactly right.
• 24:05
  Speaker B: And the rest of it, we fall way short of that.
• 24:07
  Speaker A: Yep.
• 24:07
  Speaker B: So. But we get pretty close on wildlife. You know, we. You mentioned like the Axis deer, and think about an animal taken out of its native range, doing better and then going back. I mean, pretty astounding.
• 24:20
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 24:20
  Speaker B: You know, I do a lot of work with the Wild Sheep Foundation. My other side of stuff. Loves wild sheep. And if there wasn't a Wild Sheep foundation as chapter in the fields, it probably wouldn't be wild sheep in America.
• 24:30
  Speaker A: Probably. Right.
• 24:30
  Speaker B: Yeah. Not huntable numbers.
• 24:32
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 24:33
  Speaker B: And it's because they care and they fund and they raise money and people get that and. But it's, it's, it's such a unique thing and I just want to make sure that kids can see wild sheep on the mountain one day. And they know because, you know, I talk about this in a documentary. It kind of is. The essence of it is I saw my first actual live shark when I was like 12 on the 61st Street Pier in Galveston, Texas. It was a little bonnethead, which is kind of like people call them baby hammerheads.
• 25:00
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 25:01
  Speaker B: They only get about four feet long. This guy was probably two feet.
• 25:04
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 25:05
  Speaker B: But it was live. And I got to touch. Could have been a 20 foot tiger shark and I wouldn't have been happier. And I remember sitting there and get the end of the pier and the moon's rising over the Gulf and I look at my dad and I'm like, like, dad, this is little me, big dreaming me, little investigative me. So, any great whites out here? And he goes, maybe, son. And that little hook of hope helped me carry on through that little investigation I've kind of done my whole life. And then one day a shark pops up at South Padre island and she zips right past Galveston, Texas, about a week later. And guess what? There might have been one out there.
• 25:42
  Speaker A: Might have been one out there. Yeah.
• 25:43
  Speaker B: But here's the good part. There is now.
• 25:45
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 25:46
  Speaker B: And that's cool.
• 25:46
  Speaker A: That is very cool. I mean, you know, that's. I mean, I'm very anxious to keep. To, to watch your video.
• 25:55
  Speaker B: Thank you, man. I really appreciate it.
• 25:56
  Speaker A: Looking forward to that. But you know, man, you're looking at. And what is the title of your video?
• 26:00
  Speaker B: It's Dolph. Great White Sharks Return of an Icon Elf.
• 26:04
  Speaker A: Great White Shark Return of an icon. Is it? When will it be?
• 26:08
  Speaker B: It's out right now.
• 26:08
  Speaker A: It's out right Now. Yeah.
• 26:09
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 26:10
  Speaker A: Okay. So google that, find that, watch that.
• 26:12
  Speaker B: Yeah. Subscribe to my channel. Chestermore wildlife journalist and investigator. I got a whole playlist of Gulf great white stuff on there and a bunch of other crazy wildlife stuff that I do.
• 26:20
  Speaker A: That's cool. That is very cool. But it's, you know, it's. They're such an iconic animal.
• 26:25
  Speaker B: The iconic.
• 26:26
  Speaker A: There are, there are a handful of. Of icons. You mean the African elephant is one that, you know, everybody recognizes that.
• 26:34
  Speaker B: Tigers, lions and bears.
• 26:38
  Speaker A: But you know, the big. And you know, the bighorn sheep, the Rocky Mountain bighorn sheep is that is. That's, you know, when I look at, when I, you know, of course I grew up kind of similar to you.
• 26:47
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 26:47
  Speaker A: Reading. You know, Chuck Adams was the guy that I followed.
• 26:50
  Speaker B: Yeah, I used to read Chuck Adams too, growing up.
• 26:51
  Speaker A: So, you know, I read everything. Like I started bow hunting not because of Fred Bear.
• 26:57
  Speaker B: Your mom was Fred Bear, but.
• 26:59
  Speaker A: Well, mine was not. Mine was Chuck Adams.
• 27:01
  Speaker B: Cool.
• 27:01
  Speaker A: Yeah, Chuck Adams here and caught up quick on Fred Bear because he has
• 27:06
  Speaker B: a little beanie on and he was out there shooting everything with a bow.
• 27:10
  Speaker A: Everything with a bow.
• 27:11
  Speaker B: I got pictures of that photo. You know, I told you about scrapbooks I made. There's a Chuck Adams picture with a bear in there.
• 27:15
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 27:16
  Speaker B: And one of my scrapbooks.
• 27:17
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 27:18
  Speaker B: And yeah, those people would. Inspired you, you know, and it was like, I told you I got to meet new gent when I was 19. Been friends with him since then.
• 27:26
  Speaker A: That's cool.
• 27:27
  Speaker B: And he puts two of Fred Bear's hunted with broadheads in my hand. I'm like rubbing mojo off of them, you know.
• 27:35
  Speaker A: Well, it's funny, when you were telling that story, I realized that, you know, the first broadhead I used, honey, was a Fred Bear broadhead.
• 27:42
  Speaker B: Was it like an old bear blade leader blade on it?
• 27:45
  Speaker A: Yeah, that was it. That was the one that I. And I still have a lot with cleaning out some stuff the other day. And I was like, oh, I've still got those, but I'm never going to use. I'll throw them away. I'm like, nope. I've had them since some. Since I was about 14 or 15. I'm going to keep people.
• 27:56
  Speaker B: No, that's a, That's a special memory, you know.
• 28:00
  Speaker A: But you know, apex predators are. There's. There's something visceral, a visceral reaction that people have and a. Just a lot of focus on that. You know, people. People will look at that animal and they'll either be terrified and all to go away, you know, it's kind of like me and snakes, you know, I. I don't.
• 28:22
  Speaker B: You're one of those guys.
• 28:23
  Speaker A: I don't mind snakes. I won't play with them. But if it can kill me, I don't much. I don't mind killing it. But, you know, like, I've got in the vineyard, I'll have king snakes, I'll have bull snakes, I'll have hognose, you know, all that kind of stuff. And I don't care. You know, I watch them and, I mean, it's cool to watch them. And I'll stop and I'll. You know, if I'm going through the vineyard, I'll stop and I'll look at them and stuff. But now, if it's a rattlesnake, it's a little bit different story. It kind of gets me a little bit antsy.
• 28:46
  Speaker B: Well, rattlesnakes are an interesting animal right there. When you hear that sound.
• 28:52
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 28:52
  Speaker B: You know, we talked about the. Well, I didn't tell. Last night was right after Ted let me hold the broadheads, he took out a recurve, and that's one of Fred's recurves.
• 29:02
  Speaker A: Oh, wow.
• 29:02
  Speaker B: I got to hold it. No, I said, hey, bro, you got, like, two of these.
• 29:05
  Speaker A: You know, hook a brother up.
• 29:08
  Speaker B: That didn't work. That didn't work. Somehow I didn't get to. I didn't get to do that. But that is.
• 29:14
  Speaker A: That is pretty cool. That's a. Both Fred Barented are both very interesting characters.
• 29:20
  Speaker B: Absolutely. And I've watched. I've watched Ted over the years lead a lot of people to go hunting, inspire a whole lot of people.
• 29:26
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 29:26
  Speaker B: And, you know, we all got our, I guess, brick on the wall, you know, like, we're watchmen on the wall for this fishing, hunting, wildlife conservation thing. And we all have our places, you know, and we have to be vigilant for what we do. And I respect. You know, I have a lot of people I disagree with on certain things, but you know what? Nobody gets it.
• 29:46
  Speaker A: All.
• 29:47
  Speaker B: Right. I. I tend toward more the conservation side of things. That's where I have a real impact and talent, I think, on part of it. And. But I do, you know, take place the hunter advocacy and stuff, too, because this is what pays the bills for it. And, you know, and it's very. I'm unapologetically a hunter. You know, I hunt. I don't get to hunt a lot because I'm in Texas and I'm not that rich.
• 30:09
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 30:09
  Speaker B: And like I said last Night. The guy that wanted to camp for the rich because we already have. Every ranch in Texas is that, you know, every ranch in Texas is that we want for everybody, you know.
• 30:18
  Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. I mean, that's, that's exactly right. Texas is a, a, it is a very private dump, private property dominated state. And you know, we have, I mean quite for good, for better or worse, we have pretty much perfected the model of hunting leases in Texas.
• 30:36
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 30:37
  Speaker A: And it's just, you know, it's. The fact of the matter is it's just an expensive. The barriers to entry are pretty high, you know. Oh, it's funny. Everybody laughs. You know, I was talking to somebody the other day and we were talking about, you know, golf is one of the things that I did as a kid growing up. They're like, well, you know, it's such a rich person sport, you know, not really. I mean, you know, you can go get, go to a garage sale. You can get, you can still get a cheap set of golf clubs and you can go to a muni course and you can pay 35, 40 bucks and you can play around a golf 10 bucks, you can go get a bucket of balls or whatever. I mean, you know, it's not necessarily. I said, I said if you want to get something that's expensive, I said, getting a hunt.
• 31:16
  Speaker B: Oh, yeah.
• 31:16
  Speaker A: It's like hunting what? I was like, it doesn't matter.
• 31:17
  Speaker B: It doesn't matter.
• 31:18
  Speaker A: It doesn't matter.
• 31:18
  Speaker B: It could be waterfowl.
• 31:20
  Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. I mean you go out and you go waterfowl. Okay, well you're gonna have to have, you know, your guns and your shotguns and non talk shot and all that kind of stuff. And then you're like, okay, well now I'm into it now. Now I need a dog. Well, there's four grand on the dog.
• 31:34
  Speaker B: And then you gotta train the dog,
• 31:35
  Speaker A: and then you gotta train the dog and then you gotta feed the dog.
• 31:37
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 31:37
  Speaker A: Anything happens to the dog.
• 31:38
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 31:39
  Speaker A: It's like I realized that growing up on the farm, we always had pets. We always had just Heinz 57 dog for a long time. And I realized when I bought my bird dog a year and a half ago that times had changed because you could buy health insurance for your pet. I'm like, I'm not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing.
• 32:00
  Speaker B: So what kind of dog do you have?
• 32:02
  Speaker A: I have a Hungarian wire hair vizsla.
• 32:04
  Speaker B: Whoa. It's a specific dog.
• 32:06
  Speaker A: It is a very specific Hungarian wire.
• 32:09
  Speaker B: These was a pretty. Yeah, I had a Chesapeake Bay Retriever.
• 32:12
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 32:12
  Speaker B: Chessy.
• 32:13
  Speaker A: Those are beautiful dogs.
• 32:14
  Speaker B: She's pretty. So the way I describe Chessies are like this. Okay. Your golden retrievers or your Hollywood dog. They're like Bush's baked bean dog.
• 32:23
  Speaker A: Yep.
• 32:23
  Speaker B: Air bud.
• 32:24
  Speaker A: Yep.
• 32:25
  Speaker B: Labrador is like a frat boy. Kind of wild, crazy, but lovable. Chesapeake is the mafia. It's all business. So they're so intense. All business, you know.
• 32:36
  Speaker A: Yep. Well, on the. The reason I got a Hungarian Warhair Vizsla was I've never trained a bird dog before. An upland game bird dog. I've had labs.
• 32:44
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 32:45
  Speaker A: And I've worked with labs and I've trained labs. And you know that that's a dog that is bred to retrieve.
• 32:50
  Speaker B: Sure.
• 32:50
  Speaker A: I mean, it's in the name Labrador retriever. I mean, it loves the water. It loves. You know, you throw a dummy out there and you're just going to go plowing through it. But I never trained an upland game bird dog.
• 33:00
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 33:01
  Speaker A: And so I'm like, going, okay. I started looking into them and, like, you know, English setters are big running dogs. And where I am, we have. We have the same problem that's affected. You know, most species that we're managing that are. That are either either struggling or in decline. It's 100 because of habitat fragmentation.
• 33:20
  Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's definitely a problem.
• 33:22
  Speaker A: Where we are, it's fragmented. And so I'm fortunate enough to have 100 acres of good quail hunt land that is bordered by a couple thousand acres of CRP and stuff that's also good for them. So the numbers will stay up there. But I'm hunting in a place that's literally 100 acres. So that's 43,560 square foot times 100, and that's how many square feet I have to hunt.
• 33:45
  Speaker B: Wow.
• 33:46
  Speaker A: And so, you know, you get an English pointer and you kick it out, and that dog's gonna go eight miles before it stops. And if it goes eight miles, it's halfway across the county.
• 33:55
  Speaker B: Wow. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 33:56
  Speaker A: So I needed something that's going to stay close. I saw. I tell them I bought a hunger wire adventure because it's a bird dog with training wheels.
• 34:02
  Speaker B: A bird dog with training wheels. I like that.
• 34:04
  Speaker A: You get that we have to have that on that. But. Well, I think it's. I think we're getting up into lunchtime now, so we've got.
• 34:11
  Speaker B: So I'll be covered. White sharks to Vizslas to Chesapeake. So it's pretty good. Yeah.
• 34:16
  Speaker A: Yep. And a little bit of conservation A little bit of hunting in Texas and stuff like that.
• 34:20
  Speaker B: Yeah, man.
• 34:21
  Speaker A: You know, we've got a lot of.
• 34:22
  Speaker B: So my perfect hunting day. I mean, if I had a lot of money, it'd be different to me, but my perfect hunting day is basically to go on an awesome duck hunt in the morning and then go in the afternoon hunt hogs. I love hog hunting. So that's like my perfect hog.
• 34:35
  Speaker A: You're in a good part of state to do both of those.
• 34:37
  Speaker B: Yes, that's like my perfect hunting day right there.
• 34:39
  Speaker A: That's a pretty good.
• 34:40
  Speaker B: I love waterfowl, love hogs. So it's. I've written books on both, so that's part of my. What I do. Yep.
• 34:45
  Speaker A: I'll tell you what, there's some. You know, one of the best hunting memories I have is I got to go on a cull hunt on a high fence ranch down in the Three Rivers area down right that neck of the woods.
• 34:56
  Speaker B: Yeah, a lot of hogs, a lot of javelinas there too.
• 34:58
  Speaker A: And we got. And the day before I got there, they shot a small pit small hog, like a hundred pounder or something like that. So. And so they started to fire in the morning. They buried the pig and cooked it all day. And we came back in, they pulled up and it was. And just. They just set the whole hog.
• 35:17
  Speaker B: Oh yeah, that's good stuff.
• 35:18
  Speaker A: And just had tor. Had fresh tortillas, you know, and go to town with it.
• 35:22
  Speaker B: You know what's interesting, good closing point here of good hunting memories. So two years ago, a friend of mine invited me to go up to Lubbock and go sandhill crane hunting. And we just blasted some things. One of my favorite memories on that hunt was I'm out there and I look and there's about a 300 pound boar walking out in the middle of that pasture with about 3 inch cutters. And I'm like, anybody got a rifle? I'm like, dude, if I could shoot him and a sandhill the same day. Perfect hunt. Perfect hunt.
• 35:52
  Speaker A: So you're just hunting with the wrong people. Because if it's. If it's in a season, I've probably got something in my truck that can take it down.
• 35:58
  Speaker B: I hear you. We were not quite armed with the distance of shooting at that booger.
• 36:03
  Speaker A: Yes. Yeah. Well, some of those suckers are pretty big, but yeah, I mean it's. We used to have more of them up there than we do now. Yeah, there was. When the peanuts. We first started growing peanuts. They were. I mean it was. Yeah, there was Eastern Terry county, which is Terry county, is 30 miles by 30 miles. It's a square.
• 36:20
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 36:21
  Speaker A: And the eastern half of that, the eastern 15 by 30 or whatever being there, they estimated it had. I think it was 27,000 hogs in that area. And you'd plant a circle. Somebody go out and plant 30 acres of peanuts one day, and they come back the next day, and those hogs would root up right down that row and eat every peanut seed you planted in 30 acres in one night. Wow. And so they got. A couple farmers got together and copters. Had copters come in. And we've still got them, but they're at a manageable level now.
• 36:50
  Speaker B: You can't really do copters in East Texas too much. A little bit of getting in a pasture, but they're too thick.
• 36:55
  Speaker A: Yeah. There's no. It's. You can't do that there, but you can do it in farmland.
• 37:01
  Speaker B: There you go.
• 37:01
  Speaker A: And that. That helped a whole lot. A little bit. You know, and it's, you know, nobody wants them gone. I mean, I take that back. There are some people that just want them gone. Yeah. And they're. They're an invasive species. I mean, they're. You know, they're not. They're. They're.
• 37:13
  Speaker B: Here's the good news. They ain't going nowhere.
• 37:15
  Speaker A: No. No, they're not.
• 37:18
  Speaker B: I know I just made someone mad, but I like hunting them. And no matter what, you got to control them. They ain't going nowhere. Yeah.
• 37:23
  Speaker A: And that's the thing. That's. That's. That's the thing about it. Like, you're not going to go anywhere. But we got them down to a level where they're manageable now.
• 37:29
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 37:29
  Speaker A: And if you really want to go hunting, you know, hunting one, you know, you can make two phone calls and find somebody that'll let you go home.
• 37:35
  Speaker B: I love it.
• 37:36
  Speaker A: And that's just the thing. And that's the thing about it. It's, you know, but it's. You know, that even where I grew up, I said that, you know, the only. The only constant in this life is change. Yeah. You know, it's going to be different. And, you know, this area is just very. In Terry county has changed so much in my lifespan that I don't even know what it's going to be like when my grandkids are my age. You know, I don't have grandkids yet. Mercifully, I told my kids when they got married this last summer, I'd let them know when I was ready to be grandpa.
• 38:06
  Speaker B: Well, let's just make a vow, as people are outdoor communicators, to keep the word about conservation and wildlife moving forward and keep this experiment in North America doing well and keep the critters on the mountain and in the oceans, in the forest, in the fields.
• 38:20
  Speaker A: My motto is and I stole this from. I think Tyler Webster, Western Windshield Podcast said this, and I think he got it from somebody else, but that's where I heard it. It's not ours. It's just our time.
• 38:32
  Speaker B: I like it.
• 38:33
  Speaker A: And so it's our turn to take care of it. It's our turn to get ready to pass it on. And I look forward to more and more reports of great whites in the Gulf.
• 38:41
  Speaker B: Go to gulfgreatwhites.com and subscribe at Gulf Great White Shark Society on Instagram and keep up with all of it.
• 38:47
  Speaker A: I will do that.
• 38:47
  Speaker B: We are the bleeding edge of great white shark information in the Gulf.
• 38:50
  Speaker A: There you go. Chester, thank you very much for taking your time. I appreciate it, Appreciate it. And I look forward to watching your video documentary tonight. And I would encourage everybody, gulfgreatwhitesharks. Com, get on there and get signed up and keep an eye on what's going on in the Gulf. Thanks, man.
• 39:04
  Speaker B: Thanks. It's an honor to be on your show, man.
• 39:06
  Speaker A: Thank you very much.