In June, Tanner Mansell, a diving guide and shark photographer who lives in Jupiter, Florida, was piloting his boat back to shore when he spotted two bright red objects floating in the water. As Mansell, 32, got closer, he realized they were gasoline cans, and he could smell the fuel dripping into the ocean.

His crew suggested they drag the containers onto the boat, to prevent more toxic liquid from dripping into the sea, but Mansell stopped, petrified by a panic attack.

His mind raced through unlikely scenarios: What if the cans were full of drugs? What if they belonged to someone important? What if doing the right thing put him on the wrong side of the law?

鈥淟ogically, I鈥檓 thinking, 鈥榊eah, there’s gas leaking into the ocean right in front of us, we should get these cans out of the water,'” he told 国产吃瓜黑料. “But another part of me is like, 鈥業 don’t want to touch anything out here ever again.鈥欌��

Mansell鈥檚 bizarre reaction is the product of the last five years of his life, during which he was declared a felon by the federal government for doing something that, at the time, he believed was the right thing to do.

A legal case drained him of his resources and energy. For several years he lost many of the rights everyday Americans enjoy. And, despite a presidential pardon which restored his freedom, Mansell now worries that doing the right thing could have devastating consequences.

Doing the Right Thing Turned Out to Be Wrong

The date was August 10, 2020. Mansell, who specializes in diving tours to spot sharks, and his charter boat captain, John Moore Jr., were taking a group of six tourists to the clear waters off the Florida coast. About three miles off the Jupiter Inlet, where two rivers spill into the ocean, they came across a red buoy, which was a marker for a longline fishing operation.

Longlining is a fishing method that entails attaching bait to hooks strewn out at intervals along a single fishing line that stretches up to 20 miles across the ocean. It is banned in many areas, and heavily regulated in the waters off the coastal U.S.

Mansell and Moore examined the longline鈥攃aught on it were 19 sharks of various species as well as a goliath grouper, a protected fish. 鈥淭here were great hammerheads, tiger sharks, lemon sharks, nurse sharks,鈥� Mansell said.

Mansell said that some of the species of sharks caught in the line were also protected by law. 鈥淭hat鈥檚 the thing about a long line,鈥� Mansell explained. 鈥淵ou can鈥檛 control who shows up and bites it.鈥�

No other boats were in sight, he said, and he and Moore were unsure of what to do with the trapped animals. Mansell said the two called law enforcement to seek advice: the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC), which patrols state waters, and then, through an employee of Mansell鈥檚 dive company on shore, a hotline for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the federal agency in charge of, among other things, protecting marine ecosystems.

NOAA declined to comment for this story, and the FWC did not respond to requests for an interview. In a 2022 press release, the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Southern District of Florida acknowledged that Moore and Mansell called law enforcement, but said the men failed to mention that the line was attached to “a properly marked buoy.鈥�

Mansell told 国产吃瓜黑料 that the advice he received from the government was, at best, opaque. So he and Moore freed the sharks, cut the line, and hauled three miles of it into their boat, as their clients captured the ordeal on their smartphones.

As it turned out, the longline had been set by a seafood distributor that possessed a rare, highly-coveted 鈥渘o limits鈥� research permit from NOAA to use a longline to catch sharks. According to the federal register, in 2024 NOAA granted only three no-limits permits to fishermen.

鈥淭here are only a handful of them given out in the entire continental U.S. because of how destructive it can be when people are killing sharks indiscriminately,鈥� Mansell said.

The Palm Beach Post, in the weeks before the line was cut, the fisherman who placed it had announced his intentions intentions to set a longline off of Jupiter in a Facebook post.

Even though Mansell and Moore didn鈥檛 remove the entire longline鈥攚hich prosecutors said was worth around $1,300鈥攂ecause they had tampered with it and freed the sharks, the two were charged with the theft of commercial fishing gear in federal waters, a felony.

Mansell said the events caught him off-guard. He thought that freeing the sharks had been the right thing to do. But since they were hooked on a line belonging to the distributor, prosecutors accused them of theft. 鈥淏ecause we let them go, that was stealing,” he said. 鈥淚 found myself in this political mess.鈥�

听the Miami Herald, prosecutors argued that Mansell and Moore knew that the longline was legal, yet cut it and freed the sharks.

Moore, a former commercial fisherman, told the听Miami Herald听that if the duo had believed the fishing line to be legal, they would have left it alone.

鈥淭hey tried to paint me as like some environmental terrorist,鈥� Moore told the newspaper. 鈥淎nd, I鈥檓 far from it.鈥�

On December 6, 2022, a federal jury in the Southern District of Florida found Mansell and Moore guilty of theft of property.

The Impact of a Felony Conviction

The felony conviction changed Mansell’s life. In February 2023, he and Moore were sentenced to one year of probation. And instead of the $250,000 they could have been charged, the men were ordered to pay $3,343 in restitution, to compensate for the lost line and the freed sharks.

But Mansell’s public record was forever tarnished. As a dive guide, he made much of his living traveling internationally, taking tourists on trips to the Caribbean, South Pacific, and other far-flung locales. It became incredibly difficult for him to travel outside of the United States, he said, because applying for most foreign visas requires disclosure of criminal history. State-by-state, convicted felons also face restrictions in a slew of other areas, including voting rights, firearm rights, parental rights, and a variety of public social benefits.

鈥淭his conviction led to years of my life not being able to travel for work,鈥� Mansell said. 鈥淭raveling and guiding is what I did for a living. Basically, my entire job got taken away from me.鈥�

Mansell and Moore spent the next two years battling to clear their names. Their legal fees soared, and a GoFundMe page eventually raised $28,000 to defer costs of lawyers and appeals.

Both men filed appeals to the conviction in 2023, and a district court in Florida heard their appeals case in June 2024. But the court ruled against them. In her conclusion, however, the district judge indicated that the two had successfully proven their point鈥攖hat they believed they were doing the right thing.

“They are the only felons I have ever encountered, in 18 years on the bench and three years as a federal prosecutor, who called law enforcement to report what they were seeing and what actions they were taking in real time,” Barbara Lagoa, the circuit judge, wrote in her conclusion. “They are felons who derived no benefit, and in fact never sought to derive any benefit, from the conduct that now stands between them and exercising the fundamental rights from which they, are disenfranchised.”

A Surprise Pardon

On May 28, 2025, nearly five years after he cut the longlines, Mansell got good news.

He鈥檇 just boarded an airplane when, out of the blue, he received a call from his lawyer. “He said ‘You just got a full pardon from the President of the United States,” Mansell said.

鈥淚 couldn’t even speak,鈥� Mansell added. 鈥淚 didn鈥檛 know what to say. I just sat there in shock and silence. It was probably the best news I had ever heard in my life.鈥�

Mansell and Moore were among 16 other criminals pardoned by Trump.

Mansell said his legal team never reached out to the White House seeking a pardon. Instead, lawyers from the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, included Mansell’s story while about over-criminalization. In December, 2024, the Cato Institute with the district court鈥攁n official request鈥攖o overturn the conviction.

While Mansell was overjoyed at the presidential pardon, his excitement was tempered by the realization that his crimes haven鈥檛 technically been erased.

鈥淭echnically, it鈥檚 still on the record, which is a bit of a buzzkill,鈥� Mansell explained. He still has a criminal history, and is required to disclose his record any time he travels.

鈥淣ew Zealand, Australia鈥� All these places I guide require on your travel visa to mark if you have a criminal history鈥攁nd I do,” he added. “If you mark that, you get put in a different section, and have different hoops and bounds to go through.”

But other rights have been restored. He can vote, own firearms, access public housing, and apply for federal or state grants, for example.

鈥淪till, it鈥檚 pretty epic. I’m stoked,” he said. “I can do all the normal things an ordinary citizen can do.鈥�

Although he鈥檚 mostly back to his normal life as a dive guide, Mansell told 国产吃瓜黑料 that things still aren鈥檛 quite the same for him. He’s become fearful of accidentally breaking the law during his diving trips鈥攁 fear he had to overcome when his crew saw the gasoline cans bobbing in the waves this past June.

Eventually, Mansell’s crew convinced him to let them load the leaking gas cans onto his boat. They motored into shore having removed toxic fuel from the ecosystem. But for the rest of the day, Mansell expected the worst.

鈥淓very day I go out off the coast of Florida, there’s a touch of anxiety and distrust,鈥� he said. 鈥淭hat joy that I used to have every time I went out there, it鈥檚 changed. It鈥檚 going to be a battle to overcome that.鈥�

The post After a Trump Pardon, This Shark Diver Is Putting His Life Back Together. It鈥檚 Not Easy. appeared first on 国产吃瓜黑料 Online.

The seafood you just purchased from your local grocery store could contain critically endangered shark species, a has found.

Certain endangered species of shark are being mislabeled in the U.S., according to scientists from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill who authored the study. Of the samples their team collected, nearly one-third were shown to contain endangered or critically endangered species like the great hammerhead, scalloped hammerhead, tope and shortfin mako sharks.听听Other samples contained vulnerable species of shark, including the spinner, lemon, common thresher and blacktip shark.

Seafood is a staple in many outdoor athletes’ backcountry kitchen kits. But with the world’s oceans facing threats from climate change and overfishing, some have wondered whether seafood will remain a sustainable option. Although you may not intentionally buy endangered shark meat, some restaurants and distributors list shark on their menus as “rock salmon,” “flake,” and “caz贸n,” for example.

Since the 1970s, shark populations have declined by more than 70 percent. Globally, one-third of sharks鈥攁s well as their cousins, rays and chimaeras鈥攁re threatened with extinction, according to the global sustainability authority, the .

This study contributes to a growing body of research aimed at characterizing threats to the ocean鈥檚 apex predators.

鈥淲e found critically endangered sharks, including great hammerhead and scalloped hammerhead, being sold in grocery stores, seafood markets, and online,鈥� said , a marine ecologist and study author, in a .

Researchers tested 29 samples of raw shark steaks and shark jerky bought in Washington, D.C., North Carolina, Florida, Georgia, and online. DNA analysis revealed that 93 percent of samples were 鈥渁mbiguously labeled as 鈥榮hark,鈥欌�� said Ryburn. One, for example, was labeled as a blacktip shark, which is considered a vulnerable species, but actually contained meat from the endangered shortfin mako.

Though fishing for and consuming shark meat is legal in the U.S., the industry is heavily regulated, according to the . Regulations dictate what types of species are allowed to be harvested and where. In the U.S., the requires that all sharks, with one exception, be brought to shore with their fins naturally attached. And under the Endangered Species Act, it is illegal to target or harvest an endangered species.

鈥淗owever, by the time large shark species reach grocery stores and markets, they are often sold as fillets with all distinguishing features removed, making it unlikely that sellers know what species they are offering,鈥� said Ryburn.

Three of the species found in the mislabeled samples鈥攕calloped hammerhead, great hammerhead, and dusky smooth-hound shark鈥攁re also known to contain high levels of mercury, which can cause damage to the brain and central nervous system.

Ryburn added that consumers should 鈥渁void purchasing products that lack species-level labeling or traceable sourcing.鈥�

To identify the type of seafood you鈥檙e buying or eating, familiarize yourself with labeling and packaging requirements, especially the processor鈥檚 certification number. Resources like and the will听certify whether seafood was caught sustainably.

The post Like Seafood? You May Be Eating Endangered Sharks. appeared first on 国产吃瓜黑料 Online.

Fifty years ago, Jaws hit theaters with the force of a tsunami, and proceeded to scare the living daylights out of millions of viewers.听Beach attendance in the months following the film鈥檚 release, and more than a third of viewers reported feeling an increased sense of fear while swimming. The 鈥淛aws Effect鈥� was so powerful during those days that some people even .

Decades later, surprisingly little has changed. In 2015, four decades after Jaws premiered, to swim in the ocean because of sharks, and more than half admitted to experiencing galeophobia, a general fear of sharks.

I see this fear firsthand as a scuba diver. The first question people inevitably ask me is: What would you do if you saw a shark?

I don鈥檛 have to wonder. I鈥檝e encountered hundreds. And they’re beautiful. I watched dozens of hammerheads swirl around me in the Red Sea, and I’ve听drifted through French Polynesia鈥檚 legendary 鈥淲all of Sharks,鈥� where up to gather in a single day. One of the most incredible moments of my life came at a remote dive site off Mexico鈥檚 Baja Peninsula, where I floated peacefully above a river of 100 silky sharks.

I consider myself lucky that I didn鈥檛 see Jaws until my mid-twenties, after many real-life shark encounters. The New York Times calls Spielberg鈥檚 film a听 鈥攂ut it鈥檚 fiction. Sharks don鈥檛 crave human flesh. Most attacks on humans are likely cases of mistaken identity; from below, , which are on sharks鈥� menu. There were only 47 unprovoked shark bites worldwide last year, according to the . Just four of them were fatal. To put that in perspective, around .

And humans pose a much bigger threat to sharks than they pose to us. We kill roughly 鈥�a major problem for us when they are key to maintaining the stability of ocean food chains that feed billions of people around the world.

After decades of fear, a new generation of social media activists hopes to reverse the narrative. They鈥檙e flooding our feeds with peaceful, viral encounters aimed to replace terror with awe and understanding.

But can influencer-driven messaging truly repair decades of damage? Or does it present new, unintended risks for sharks?

How Jaws Scarred (and Inspired) Generations

Jaws didn鈥檛 invent a fear of sharks. By the sixties, occasional scares prompted short-lived panics. After one shark scare near Coney Island, the New York World-Telegram that city police 鈥渢riggered several bursts of machine gun fire, aiming into the water for the benefit of photographers.鈥� Such theatrical responses were typically enough to reassure beachgoers鈥�or a time.

But when Jaws hit screens in 1975, it etched these fears into our collective consciousness. Virtually overnight, the great white shark鈥攁nd by extension all sharks鈥攚ere perceived as ruthless killers prowling the coasts.

鈥淥ne of the great things, in movie terms, about a shark as the villain is that you can’t anthropomorphize it,鈥� Linda DeLibero, a film lecturer at Johns Hopkins University, said in a . 鈥淚t doesn’t seem to have any personality or feelings.鈥�

A great irony of Jaws is how difficult it was for even the filmmakers to even simulate a shark attack.

鈥淭hey had the rather ridiculous notion that for the shark shots, they could just get a real shark and a trainer and have the shark learn some tricks,鈥� said DeLibero. 鈥淭hey quickly realized that that was absolutely ridiculous, and so they built these mechanical sharks鈥� that rarely worked. 鈥淚f you’re paying attention, the shark is invisible until that amazing moment鈥攑robably the biggest shock in the film鈥攚hen Brody is throwing the chum overboard and it pops up out of the water. The shark worked that day, and they weren’t happy with the way it looked, but it didn’t really matter.鈥�

This engineered portrayal had real-world consequences. Shark-fishing tournaments surged in the late seventies, with eager to reenact the heroics of听Jaws’ shark hunter, Captain Quint.

While public fear itself didn’t cause the global decline of shark populations, it severely undermined early conservation efforts. Sympathy for sharks was effectively crushed by their portrayal as relentless monsters. this has made it difficult over the years to get public or political support to regulate shark fishing or reduce accidental catches (bycatch).

鈥淲henever I say 37 percent听of all named species of sharks and their relatives are threatened with extinction, there’s always someone who says, 鈥楪ood. How can we get that to 100%?鈥欌�� says Dr. David Shiffman, a marine conservation scientist at Johns Hopkins and author of .

鈥淭he fact that so many people are absolutely terrified of sharks鈥攚hich many of them trace back to Jaws鈥攎akes it harder for us to care and lobby or and to elicit public support to lobby for conservation. That is a big problem, not only for sharks, but for the oceans as a whole and for humans. Sharks play vital roles in keeping coastal and oceanic ecosystems healthy.鈥�

Even now, public officials invoke the film to justify anti-shark measures. Fictional Amity Island mayor Larry Vaughn, who notoriously kept beaches open despite shark attacks, remains a shorthand for political mismanagement of shark incidents. Nobody wants to follow in his footsteps. In 2023 George Gorman, the Long Island regional director for New York State Parks, explained drone patrols and beach closures after five shark bites in two days by saying 鈥淚 don鈥檛 want to be the mayor of Amity.鈥� And between 2000 and 2014, officials in Western Australia repeatedly ordered controversial shark culls by claiming there was an 鈥渋mminent threat,鈥� of rogue killer sharks.

Jaws also shaped legions of imitators. A found that 96 percent听portrayed sharks as threatening to humans. Finding Dory was the only exception. Some of such media is just absurd fun, like Sharknado and Mega Shark Versus Giant Octopus. But even those films resonate precisely because sharks are ready-made villains. It鈥檚 like putting Nazis in your film: it鈥檚 an instant shorthand for evil.

Then there鈥檚 the Discovery Channel’s annual Shark Week, which Shiffman calls 鈥渁 dumpster fire of lies, pseudoscience, and nonsense.鈥� After analyzing 206 hours of Shark Week programming, his team concluded it primarily reinforces existing misconceptions of sharks as mindless threats, and rarely discusses threats to sharks or how they can be addressed.

A dive operator in the Bahamas once told me, allegedly, that a Shark Week production crew that chartered his vessel filled a faux pig with fish guts to emulate sharks attacking pigs from Big Major Cay, where tourists swim with the famous wild pigs.

Yet for all its harmful impacts, Jaws paradoxically inspired a legion of ocean conservationists. 鈥淭here鈥檚 a generation of marine scientists who became scientists because they saw Jaws and wanted to be Hooper,鈥� says Shiffman referencing the oceanographer that is brought to Amity to help deal with the shark. Indeed, The American Elasmobranch Society (AES) was founded in 1982, just seven years after Jaws premiered.

Sharks Enter Their Influencer Era

Jaws is enduring proof that media has a strong influence on how the public views sharks. Today, shark influencers like and are hoping to use the power of social media for conservation, not demonization.

All over Instagram and TikTok, influencers swim beside tiger sharks, calmly redirect an approaching reef shark, and reach millions of followers. Their graceful footage, often accompanied by educational conservation captions, frequently gets shared across the Internet. These peaceful shark encounters directly contradict the idea that sharks will eat anything on site. This may help unwind our cultural shark frenzy.

鈥淧eople look first and listen second,鈥� says Ramsey, a freediving shark conservationist with a combined audience of over 4 million on and who stars in the upcoming Netflix documentary Shark Whisperer. 鈥淧hotos and videos transcend language barriers鈥hey directly challenge the Jaws archetype, and are reality. Jaws was a fictitious film.鈥�

It鈥檚 also an opportunity to highlight the ways sharks are threatened by humans.

鈥淚 also will share videos where you can see the human impacts on sharks,鈥� says Fragola, a marine biologist and with a audience of 2.2 million. 鈥淚f they have a broken jaw, or there’s a fishing line hanging from them, or they’re entangled in something, that’s all caused by humans鈥eople write comments like 鈥榃ow, I feel really bad for this animal having these human impacts.鈥� And I think having that direct connection is something that’s really important for conservation.鈥�

Of course, influencer content can cross a line: 鈥淎 video of someone riding a shark, of someone hugging a shark, of people flipping sharks over鈥攖here was one guy who used to kiss sharks,鈥� says Shiffman. 鈥淭hat does not prove that sharks are cute, cuddly animals. It shows that if you annoy a wild animal, it’s gonna bite you. And I’m not sure how much that helps anyone or anything.鈥�

Not everyone agrees where that line is. In 2019, Ramsey went viral听for swimming with and touching the fin of a 20-foot pregnant great white. The footage immediately听sparked from marine scientists, who accused her of interfering with the shark鈥檚 critical feeding opportunity.

鈥淚鈥檓 not trying to inspire people to interact鈥� with sharks, insists Ramsey. 鈥淚’m trying to inspire people to get involved in shark and ray conservation.鈥� She encourages people to, for example, pressure FedEx to stop shipping shark fins, purchase beauty products that use the vegan squalane instead of shark-based squalene, eat sustainable seafood to reduce shark bycatch, and advocate for states like New York, South Carolina, Alabama, Florida and Texas to end shark fishing competitions. Ramsey also was heavily involved advocating for Hawaii鈥檚 2022 shark fishing ban and an EU shark fin ban currently under parliamentary review.

If somebody does want to encounter a shark in their natural habitat, they should go with a specialist, not only to be safer, but to maximize the amount of learning, she advises.

While influencers may be giving sharks some much-needed good PR, not all of them are trying to erase the risks of interacting with an apex predator.

鈥淪harks are not mindless eating machines鈥攂ut they鈥檙e also not puppies,鈥� cautions Fragola,听whose show sharks as both risk (coming so close she must redirect them) and victim (a shark with severe jaw damage, likely harmed by fishing). 鈥淚f people only see sharks being peaceful, they think that鈥檚 how they always are. If they only see aggression, they think it鈥檚 always dangerous. Neither is true.鈥�

Come 2075, our perception of sharks will reflect how well today’s storytellers wield their influence.

Alexandra Gillespie dove with reef sharks in Belize on her first assignment as digital editor of Scuba Diving magazine, and she’s jumped at the chance to do so ever since. With about 170 dives under her belt, she is a freelance journalist covering water and travel. Her writing has appeared in National Geographic, NPR, Afar, and U.S. News and World, among other national publications.听

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