A group of tourists aboard a boat to dive with sharks were conned by their captain and mate into helping them steal an authorized commercial fishing set up in the waters off of Jupiter, thinking they were helping free tangled sharks from illegal lines.
A jury convicted captain John R. Moore Jr., 56, of West Palm Beach, and mate Tanner J. Mansell, 29, of Jupiter, of theft of commercial fishing gear in the federal waters off Palm Beach County, court records show. They each face up to five years in prison.
Moore and Mansell led a group of six tourists out into the water in August 2020 to swim with sharks off the Jupiter Inlet, federal prosecutors said. While boating to their second dive spot of the day, Moore and Mansell saw a clearly marked orange buoy that designated a commercial fishing gear set.
Mansell and Moore, who is a former commercial fisherman, told the tourists the buoy was an illegal and abandoned “ghost set” and tricked them into helping them pull in the line, according to prosecutors. They released any fish on the hooks and took over three miles of fishing line, along with the buoy and other gear into their boat.
“The passengers took videos and still photos which established that this activity extended for more than three hours and resulted in the loss of at least 19 sharks to the fishermen and vessel owner,” prosecutors said in a news release Tuesday.
Moore called state officers and said he’d found an illegal shark fishing operation and cut entrapped lemon sharks out of the line. But he left out that the line was attached to a properly marked buoy, according to prosecutors.
While taking the tourists back to land, Moore hopped on another outbound boat, taking the stolen line with him, prosecutors said, and continued stealing the gear. A Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission officer stopped the boat, and Moore again claimed the gear he took was illegal.
The tourists took photos and videos while out on the water, showing the marked buoy, prosecutors said. When the FWC officer checked the gear on Moore’s boat, the buoy was gone.
The FWC officer also noticed that the hooks weren’t rusted like ones that were abandoned would have been, and the rest of the gear also appeared new. The officer told Moore to leave the evidence on the dock, but he instead “scavenged the line for the hooks, attachments, and weights and allowed others on the dock to take the rest of the hardware connected” to the line, prosecutors said.
Surveillance cameras on the pier recorded the removal of the evidence, including the cut line being tossed into a dumpster, prosecutors said. The gear cost a total of $1,300, and the sharks that were cut free resulted in a loss of thousands of dollars, including what would have been fishermen’s incomes.
Moore and Mansell could face a maximum fine of $250,000 and may have to pay victims restitution, according to prosecutors.
The captain and mate will be sentenced at 11:30 a.m. Feb. 9.
