EP:438 | A Discussion with Dr. Guy Harvey

On this episode we’re joined by Dr. Guy Harvey. Most folks will recognize the name from his amazingly detailed artwork that beautifies everything from tee shirts to murals all over the world. But his story is one of a love for fishing, the salt water fisheries and dedicating his life to understanding and conserving the oceans and its resources. Much of his understanding of fish and fishing was learned underwater with cameras in hand. It’s a fascinating discussion with a man who’s story is interesting and salty. 

Listen, Learn and Enjoy. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

I'm Jeff Foxworthy and welcome to Gamekeeper Podcast. If you want to learn more about farming for wildlife and habitat management, then buddy, you are in the right place. Join the Gamekeeper crew direct from Austrian Land Enhancement Studio as they discuss the latest wildlife and habitat management practices. News, and of course, honey. There's no telling what you'll learn, but I'm going to tell you. I bet it's interesting. Enjoy.

SPEAKER_02 0:26

We're live in three, two, one.

SPEAKER_03 0:29

All right, everybody. I'm so excited about our guest today. It's it's we're going down a little bit different road. We are, but still happy springtime. But did you guys you know, we always talk about habitat, improving habitat. It's a big part of what we do, but did you realize that the biggest habitat in the world is the ocean? Of course.

SPEAKER_08 0:47

Two-thirds of the planet.

SPEAKER_03 0:48

And our guest is really into improving the habitat of the ocean and conservation of oceanic species and all that. Let me get him introduced. We've got Dr. Guy Harvey. The one and only.

SPEAKER_06 1:02

Wow, what an honor. We've all been seeing this as art for years.

SPEAKER_08 1:07

You know, we kind of come from the hunting background, and uh we are deep, deep, deep conservationists. But at the bottom of all of this in common, we have is this we care for the earth that we have been granted. And so when we come across someone who has been so monumental and consequential as you, it's a reverent moment for us.

SPEAKER_00 1:30

So Father, thank you for the introduction. It's it's been a team effort over all these years. So um, but I'm glad to be on with you guys today. Thank you.

SPEAKER_03 1:39

Yes, sir. We're glad you're here. So looking around the room, just to make sure we uh people listening understand. So Toxie's all down there at the end of the table. You've heard him already. Landy's here, Douglas here. We've got Jess Rayleigh from down in the marketing department. And he's the guy Harvey Superfan.

SPEAKER_04 1:57

Well, he's like a fourth generation shrimper.

SPEAKER_08 2:03

He's first cousin with Bubba Gum.

SPEAKER_03 2:05

Yeah. All right. Let me let me let me set the stage. Let me let me introduce our guest uh in a very fitting way. So Dr. Guy Harvey, he graduated from Aberdeen University in Scotland in 1977. What were you guys doing in 1977? 1977. Then he went on and earned a PhD in fisheries management and fisheries biology from the University of West Indies. Then he's a renowned marine biologist, a conservation an artist. And he uh founded the Guy Harvey Research Institute at the Nova Southeast University. I think Auburn played them in the NIT this year. I'm not sure about that. So he was he's also won numerous awards. I there's too many that I could actually mention. And he is uh in multiple Hall of Fames for fishing, for scuba diving, Lanny, and of course for art. But he may be best known for his detailed illustrations and painting of marine life and what has grown from a hobby into a major brand. Ladies and gentlemen, we've got Dr. Guy Harvey. I mean, what an introduction!

SPEAKER_00 3:19

Thank you, thank you, thank you very much. That's pretty good, Bob.

SPEAKER_03 3:22

Yeah, and uh Richie's playing the uh America the beautiful there when we were talking about tomatoes.

SPEAKER_02 3:28

Tomato or tomato, Bobby.

SPEAKER_03 3:30

Tomato or tomato. That's right back. He just threw off his whole game. You really did. You really did, because uh, you know, I don't think uh Dr. Harvey, are you you're in the Cayman Islands somewhere, aren't you?

SPEAKER_00 3:41

That's where I live now. We're from Jamaica originally, and uh we're I'm 11th generation, so we've been there since the 1600s and um we came here in 1999 and we started the business really in Florida back in 1986. So this is the 40th anniversary of the 40th anniversary of the brand, yeah.

SPEAKER_08 4:03

It is the 40th anniversary of our brand. How about that? How fitting.

SPEAKER_05 4:07

Congratulations. What a year!

SPEAKER_08 4:08

Yep, it was uh um March 20th, 1986, which was cool because the and forever in my lifetime, the open to day spring season was the 20th of March.

SPEAKER_03 4:22

So you know they they say the first 40 years are the toughest.

SPEAKER_00 4:26

I hope so. I mean the first five are the toughest.

SPEAKER_08 4:32

I like over that one too.

SPEAKER_03 4:34

Well, Dr. Harvey, could you kind of take us back to when you were younger? What influenced you so strongly? It would your love of uh of fish.

SPEAKER_00 4:45

Growing up in Jamaica was very influential, and luckily my parents were very outdoorsy. They were cattle farmers. Uh, my dad had served in the British Army for 15 years. So when we moved back to Jamaica when he left the Army in 1956, um we took over his father's farm, and you know, it's been handed down. Um and so we grew up in that environment outdoorsy, riding, shooting, cattle, fishing, um, all the outdoors activities you'd expect, you know, in a countryside environment. Plus, my mother was a very uh very good um ornithologist, a bird watcher, and an artist in her own right. So when she saw me doing these early dabbles, um five, six, seven years old, she said, you know, she really encouraged it. And she didn't know what she started. Well, well, thank goodness you did. Yeah, how much detail do you want me to go into? As much as you wish.

SPEAKER_04 5:43

Yeah, well, yeah, I wanted to know about your art. Um, do you have any formal training in your art, or or did you go to school in Aberdeen for fisheries?

SPEAKER_00 5:54

Exactly right. So um I let me go back a step because um we got into fishing. I did early because I was actually very frightened of horses. I used to fall off a lot and I was scared of them. And so fishing became my thing from a very early age. And by the way, we have just launched a documentary. It's called Guy Harvey The Documentary, which uh we had a premiere here uh on Friday in Grand Cayman. Wow we showed it at the Fort Lauderdale International Film Festival on March 1st, and it was the final act, so to speak. And we had great turnouts, but it documents our early life and the influence of growing up in the Caribbean into becoming a fishery scientist. So Aberdeen was very influential. It kind of fine-tuned my interest in in fisheries and allowed me to uh get a good enough grade. I could get into a PhD program right away instead of doing a master's as well. I went to the uh University of the West Indies in Kingston in Jamaica, the capital, and uh did a signed up for the PhD program in 1978. I also joined the Jamaica Defense Force, then, which is very uh influential on what happened in Jamaica for the next 10 years, because uh we are entering a a stage of um I don't know what you call it, just political disruption, where we've gone from a normal parliamentary society into one that was influenced heavily by Cuba and communism. And so uh it was a very interesting time to be a PhD student and serve part-time in the defense force, in the Navy, actually.

SPEAKER_03 7:37

Can you talk to us about how uh you know a young kid growing up on that cattle farm, scared of horses, so fish you got into fishing? What what what were y'all fishing for down there back then that's exploded your mind?

SPEAKER_00 7:50

Well, all around in the in the Atlantic tropics, especially in the Western Atlantic, we get the same species you have in in Florida, for example, the Bahamas or the Gulf. Uh we fish for wahoos, tunas, barracudas, mahi-mahi, uh coastal game fish, and you know, bonefish, tarp, and stuff like that. But we love blue marlin, and the blue marlin became, I was infatuated with this animal, to be honest with you. And you know why. It's it's a big fish. They're powerful, they're hard to catch. When you do get them on the line, they're exciting beyond belief. The jumps, um, the endurance. And in those days, of course, we whacked everyone. Uh, there was no sort of real resource issue that we were looking at that you see today. So catch and release didn't involve until the late 80s in the Caribbean. Uh and in those days we caught everyone. And I got lots of photos that my mum took of us fishing, you know, as kids and growing up. And I'll never forget catching the first Marlin I saw caught was by her, and it was deformed. It had a broken bill. So I was mortified that here's my idyllic animal and it's deformed. I'll never forget that. But um, I started painting them from pretty early on, and goodness, um, the the encouragement um from my parents was just huge. I didn't realize until late into my education as a fishery scientist how important my art would be. And I, at the age of 17 and 18, I illustrated Hemingway's story of the old man in the sea, which is everybody knows that story, it's the most famous fishing story in the world. I did uh my version of it, and those original drawings are currently on permanent display in Key West at the Key West Um Art and Historical Society building there. Um it's called the Customs House, and it's it's a big tourist attraction for people.

SPEAKER_05 9:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 9:47

But that's what I was doing as a late teenager, getting into early 20s. And once I graduated from UWI, I remained on as a lecturer for quite a while. But then my hobby became my profession.

SPEAKER_03 10:03

I don't I don't think I mean I can remember Guy Harvey t-shirts. I there's a lot, I mean, when you go to the coast, you'd buy a guy Harvey t-shirt.

SPEAKER_06 10:12

Probably the first blue marlin I saw was a Guy Harvey illustration of it. Yeah, yeah. And I tell you what, the thing about the marin, too, and guy, I mean, when they're in the water, I mean, it's just the most electrifying thing you can see. They change colors. Uh, you can tell by yeah, basically what color they're meant, what phase, what phase they're kind of in.

SPEAKER_03 10:32

Like a turkey's head?

SPEAKER_06 10:34

Yeah, what a lot like a turkey, yeah. Yeah, a lot like a turkey. Yeah, yeah, right. Yeah, look at him. He's well, he's gonna he's gonna start asking for marlin trips instead of turkey.

SPEAKER_00 10:42

So go back to what you were just saying, they are amazing chameleons in the ocean. Yeah. And everybody thinks, well, you know, they're dangerous to swim with, they'll attack you and all that. But that's that's not true. We we pioneered diving with not only the blue marlin, but all the different species of billfish, the sailfish, the spearfishes. There's four different species of marlin, there's the black, the blue, the white, and the striped marlin. And we in 2007, I did a whole series on um, I think it was Outdoor Life Network, on billfish. And we spent most of the time diving, so we captured them underwater on um film and brought them into people's houses. Because you cannot keep them in an aquarium uh like some of the other bigger fish these days. Uh they they don't survive. So the only way people can see them, you know, not harassed on the end of a fishing line is by getting into their ocean, finding out where they are, finding out what they do, and just recording all the experiences. And of course, for me as an artist, it's there's nothing like doing that kind of research work to be authentic.

SPEAKER_06 11:45

Oh, yeah. And and physiologically, do you know what's happening when they're doing that? I mean, is it blood flow? Is it their skin? Is it I mean, I don't know. It's just one of the most amazing things I've ever seen.

SPEAKER_00 11:56

It well, it is, and of course they match the background, but you know what what excites me most is their feeding color because when you see a big blue marlin come up on your teaser and you're looking down in the water from the bridge of your boat, and you see this jet black body with a bright blue tail, iridescent blue, fluorescent blue, you wonder what the hell is going on with this fish? Why does it change its colour completely to black? You know, what's the advantage of being? It's like a velvety colour underwater, maybe a tinge of blue or purple in it, but that is their feeding colour, and sailfish also have that. They they all their fins shoot up, they make themselves look much bigger, but the whole body is jet black. There's no cancer shading with a lighter back and a pale sides and pale belly. Um, and to this day I don't know why they do it, but it's impressive when you see it. Oh, I'm telling you. And then when they cool down a bit after you've teased them quite a bit, and they're saying, huh? They're thinking, well, I'm not getting much out of this interaction. Where's the food? Um, you see them go pastel, and that the traveling colours are more like pastels with gentle stripes, um, and then they kind of blend with the background and they leave.

SPEAKER_05 13:04

Do you think part of that is a signal to other fish that they're about to take their shot going into the bakery? It really is.

SPEAKER_00 13:11

The bigger marlins, the blue mine and the black marlin, are really loners. You see them occasionally in pairs, maybe small groups, but hardly ever. The white mine and sailfish and striped marlin are real um group hunters, and they definitely use uh coloration change to signal um to the others, you know, their state of excitement, what they intend to do, and whether or not you know they're going to attack the bait ball they're feeding on. Because you can imagine if there's an unsynchronized, disjointed melee of fish, somebody's gonna get stabbed. And they don't want that to happen.

SPEAKER_06 13:45

Swords roll into the water, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:50

Well, exactly. So that's how how they um they they correspond, so to speak, they communicate using color, and others will hang off, hang back, and they they they go muted colors, and then when it's their turn to get into the the feeding mix, you see them just go absolutely electric blue or black or whatever, um, and do what they do. So um that coloration change is is just a special thing to to witness.

SPEAKER_03 14:17

So back in the day when you first started diving with these fish, was there any trepidation of getting in the water with these?

SPEAKER_00 14:25

Oh, yes. We had to perfect the technique, and we were fishing with a famous group out of uh Texas uh from Houston, the Madame and the Hooker. Uh the game boat was a hooker. Jerry Dunaway was the owner in those days. He caught many world records, all different billfish, very famous people and a great captain. And so we were teasing in these billfish. You can use lures with no hooks to get them come right up to the back of the boat, traveling, you know, pulling lures at seven knots. And so we perfected the technique of rolling into the water to get them when they were behind the boat. Well, we learned very quickly that you have to put on lots of weight to get you under the surface quickly, otherwise, they're going to come accidentally right at you in all this foam created by the boat's passage. And the foam is your worst enemy underwater, especially if you're taking pictures. So we put on, we whack on a 20-pound weight belt. So when you hit the water, you went boom, straight down underneath the level of all the foam. You've got clear blue, you can see the fish coming at you from any angle and line up your shots. And we perfected that technique. The other one, of course, is to find a natural feeding environment where you've got birds overhead, they point you to the fish, there's a ton of sardines or scaly mackerel or whatever you want underneath, and there where you've got a captive audience, so to speak, and bait concentrated maybe around a piece of flotsum, so they're not moving and traveling in the ocean, you've got the best scene. And those bait ball scenes are what you see in like you know, the BBC's um Blue Planet films and stuff like that. Well, you can get lucky too and find that yourself if you spend enough time on the ocean.

SPEAKER_06 16:03

So when you're rolling off of the back of the boat, I mean, uh you got these these teasers, how far are they behind the boat? And does the boat keep roll keep rolling after you you dump off?

SPEAKER_00 16:14

That's a great question. So you can keep them pretty close, and depending on the weather conditions, of course. Um the fish do follow the food. So the boat the boat basically has to stop once you go in the water, which they do, they can either glide or just kick in reverse, but that also kicks up bubbles. But you have to switch from trolling to using a spinning rod and casting to see something moving in front of it, like teasing a cat. Um, and nowadays what we use are our live bait. Okay, and the key thing is to put one on each outrigger. Let me put my hands there so you can see them. And the mine will come up on, say, the left, you yank that bait out of the water, and it swims across to the right, and you put them in like that, and you keep them going.

SPEAKER_06 16:57

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 17:01

But if you let them eat the grab the bait, it is not coming out. They they just clamp onto you, and you you're gonna lose it. So there's lots of ways of doing it. Uh, and it's it is super exciting, I tell you.

SPEAKER_05 17:14

I bet it is.

SPEAKER_00 17:15

Everyone is different.

SPEAKER_05 17:16

Yeah. How much time did you spend on the Madam and the Hooker? That's a pretty legendary.

SPEAKER_00 17:21

I think we charted it seven times. Um we knew the Dunaways extremely well, so we we went casual fishing with them as well. Um, we did see them catch some well records on light tackle. Um, another famous Texan guy I fished with uh Stuart Campbell in Madeira, I watched him catch a 872-pound blue Marlin on 30-pound test. Yeah, so big fish on Light Line. These guys were very good at that. Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 17:50

Uh Neil's buddy Ronnie Fields used to fish on the boat. I've got the book, the matter I know Ronnie very well.

SPEAKER_08 17:55

Yeah, I fish with Ronnie.

SPEAKER_00 17:59

Yeah, Ronnie's in um in two of my books, uh, one in um Cape Verde Islands and once in the the Azores. Ronnie's a tri a trip.

SPEAKER_05 18:10

Yeah, he's awesome. He he came to West Point a couple years ago. I had the opportunity to hang out with him and his dad, which is a pretty legendary fisherman, as you probably know too.

SPEAKER_00 18:18

So we were backing down on a on a 500-pound blue marlin in the Azores uh that I'd hooked on a bait rod. We're trying to catch a bait, and the marlin ate the bait on the bait rod, a 30-pound rod with a 500-pound blue marlin, and we're backing down pretty hard on this fish. And Ronnie was leaning over the stern trying to tag it with a long tag stick, maybe a 15-foot tag stick, and he slipped and fell into the water, and the boat's going backwards at about nine knots. Oh, yeah. Luckily, yeah, luckily, the wave pushed him off to the uh the port side, and of course he laughed and joked joked about it, but we went back to get him. But he he could have been min speed in one second had he fallen.

SPEAKER_08 18:59

He's a hateful. Wow. He's a great guy, a great friend, and evidently my quick, my quick Ronnie Field story. I was at the shot show, and this couple that was evidently they're PR people, and they do a lot of work with us on calling names. Anyway, they they follow the like the selfish and the Marlin tournaments and cover that. And they were talking. I said, Well, my son's really gotten into it in the last, you know, of course, thanks to Captain Kit, probably the last 15 years, and he's gotten to go on some pretty cool trips. And then uh he met this guy named, and I said, you know, this guy, and they were asking me, I said, I think he says this guy that he goes with, he's become really good friends, is like one of the best blue morning fishermen in the world. And they were like, Oh, yeah, right. What's the guy's name? And they were looking at me kind of skeptical, you know. Uh oh, Red Net Connor like me. I said, uh, his name's Ronnie Fields, and said, Oh wow, he is one of the best in the world.

SPEAKER_06 19:54

So anyway, that was like, yeah, I know him. I think I remember Ronnie. I got lucky enough to fish on a crew with him. Uh, and every time I I don't know if he was doing it because we were kneeling our fish with him or not, but every time he'd catch one, he'd gobble over the radio like a turkey. I'm like, who is this guy? This is our man right here. He is a fully rounded sportsman. Yeah, yeah. That's how we knew he had one on.

SPEAKER_03 20:18

So Alex told me I need to ask you about your 1300-pound Marlin. Whoa.

SPEAKER_00 20:23

Yeah, that that the that story is a lot of people ask me. Let's let's go back a sec here. Um, you know, what's what's the biggest fish you've seen, or what's your most famous, I mean, uh, your your most exciting encounter. It was back in 2005 at Tropic Star in Panama, Pacific side. Um, and Panama, by the way, is I've been going for whoa, since 1991. The Dunaways fish there a lot, the Hooker and the Madam, and all those guys fished there a great deal because the fishing is so good. Um, we were fishing, we were doing a lot of tagging work then. We just started our Black Marlin tracking work, and we were actually doing a TV episode for my own show that day. It was uh January the 25th, 2005. And the we I was working with Bill Shedd from AF, the owner of uh AFCO at the time, he was the guest angler on the boat, and we just released one about 400 pounds. I swam with it underwater, got great shots of it swimming away with a satellite tag, one of those big$4,000 tags. And we heard that uh the boat close by us had hooked up. Um it was the Miss Spain. So we we ambled on over. It was a nice, clear, calm day, and we're getting closer. We're fishing at the same time, we're not giving up fishing time to do this. And as you get there, we don't see anything happening, the fish hasn't jumped, and we're getting closer now, and then this fish jumps, and we all just went, Oh my god, we are gonna stay with this action because we'd never seen a fish like that before, ever. So we pull in our lines and we go close, and I got a lot of boat to boat shots of the fish jumping around. We call it 800 at the time on a 50 pound test. But the anglers were experienced. Um Neil Patrick from Australia, he caught a few before. So to cut a long story short, we stayed like two hours there, and time was going by, and they said, uh, we reckon the fish is dead. So I knew where we were, it was shallow, it was 280 feet, 270 feet to the bottom. I could dive down with another line, do a bounce dive, because I had a tank, two tanks, and clip on uh an 80-pound line to the to the leader, and the guys would be able to lift the fish up because we wanted to see this fish, it was so big. I've got to 100 feet swimming down the line, and there's this big old Marlin tail swimming along in front of my face. And I just went right back up and said, She's fine, she's just Cadillacing along. You just need to, you know, take your time, catch this fish. Well, this happened several times, and the guy said, if we want to tag this fish, the angler on the other boat, um, we're gonna have to do something to accelerate it. So I said, Well, I'll go down. And I went down six more times with the line to get to the uh the swivel, and the fish just scooted away. And of course, I'm swimming full speed underwater uh with a tank on down at 80 or 90 feet, and you you use up a lot of air and you get burned very quickly. So I said, you know, we're filming a show. This is ridiculous. I haven't got my um any pictures of this fish down here. So I took my video camera the next time with without the um the other line, went down, and I got to swim all over her. She was right beside me. I went underneath her around the back, and there was this other leader along the right side of the fish. Um, I didn't know at the time, but I'm thinking, what the hell is going on here? There's another leader with a with a fresh snap swivel on it and a piece of broken 50-pound line on it. But um what it did was give me a measurement of how big the fish was, because all the leaders there at that time at Tropic Star were 15 feet. And this leader was sticking out maybe two and a half feet behind the tail of the fish. So when I got back up, I said to the guys, um, A, I'm gonna get her next time around. There's no problem here. She's tired, she's coming up. But B, I have we have a pictorial reference of just how long this fish is. And we estimated after we released her that uh she was about a short length of about 13 feet. The average grounder, for and they killed a lot in Australia over the years, is 11 feet short length. So this is two feet longer. That's tip of lower jaw to the fork of the tail. Um, because you don't count, you know, the bills are all variable, and the tails can be variable. So you measure the fish from the tip of the jaw to the tail. The average grounder is is is 11 feet. So this fish was two feet longer, she had great proportions, and I reckon she was 12 to 1300 pounds.

SPEAKER_06 24:59

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 24:59

So we we got her up, great jump shots at the boat, the iconic shot with the fish jumping that everybody thought was faked. But I I took that picture and we let her go, and she did well. She survived for another two months, no, three months, and um went down to the Galapagos and came back to Panama. But that that was a really very big fish, and I never seen one like that. We've seen blue marlins around a thousand, eleven hundred, Madeira, the Azores, places like that.

SPEAKER_05 25:28

What's a fish that size age at?

SPEAKER_00 25:31

It would be right around 25 to 30 years old, and that's one of our uh projects right now is to get better aging techniques on them. But they live a lot.

SPEAKER_03 25:40

Wow. When you guys have these satellite tags on these fish, do they do that does it work when they're at it you know it deep in the water, or do they have to come up near the surface?

SPEAKER_00 25:52

No, you have two types of tags that we use. Uh, one is a pop-up archival tag that literally stays on the fish, mostly marlin or tuners, and fish that don't spend a lot of time at the surface. Other species like sharks will spend a lot of time at the circuit surface. So you use a different type of tag, and I'll tell you about that. The pop-up tag archives the data, so it's collecting data on the depth, the temperature, and luminescence or light and day length. So from day length, you can calculate uh latitude and longitude. And so you get a it's it's rough though, you get it within 30 or 40 miles of where the fish can be. But if it's traveling five or eight thousand miles, you get a pretty good idea of where it is. But you're you're getting all the other data. When it's programmed to come off, it shoots off the fish, goes to the surface, and transmits all the data to a satellite from where it is floating. The spot tag is one that you put on a fish that has a fixed fin, like sharks or swordfish, or you can even use them on turtles. Um, but when that fin cuts the surface, it shoots a message to a satellite that says, Here I am, and it's very accurate. It's accurate to two meters. That's you know, a couple of yards. So you're getting very accurate tracks of where these fish go. For example, Mako sharks are really good at giving you data, also hammerheads, uh tiger sharks, uh, oceanic white tips. And nowadays we we tag whale sharks, you know, they're think they're 30, 40 foot long. People say, well, how do you tag a whale shark? Do you how do you you stick a gaff in it and hold it by the boat? I said, Of course not. But you know, people don't know. So we dive on the shark and drill the dorsal fin with it with a pneumatic drill from your tank. Wow. Um wow. Yeah, it's a very cool thing to do.

SPEAKER_04 27:43

Piece of cake.

SPEAKER_06 27:44

Jump on his back, drill a hole in his fin and pop a tag in there.

SPEAKER_00 27:49

Well, in the circumstance, they're they're off uh the Yucatan where we dive a lot there. Um kind of Cancun, North of Cancun area. And they're fit they're there to feed. So if they do spook, and some of them do, and they move off, you know, in a huff, so to speak, they'll resume feeding within two or three minutes. And if you're interrupted with your tag drilling, you can go back on the same animal and do it.

SPEAKER_06 28:14

Oh, cool.

SPEAKER_00 28:15

It is cool. What is really cool about the whale sharks is because they come back time and time again every year to the same place because of the feeding operation is if the battery has died on the tag, you can actually replace the tag, and that to me is amazing because they they'll come right next to you and you can just jump on, unscrew the old one, put on a new one, and off you go.

SPEAKER_06 28:37

Just riding whale sharks, you know, it's just what we do right now.

SPEAKER_00 28:40

You get you get years of data. Yeah, you know, that's the key thing. You don't just get one tag's worth, you can do it time and time again.

SPEAKER_06 28:47

That's great for research for sure.

SPEAKER_03 28:49

So I'm guessing as a marine biologist, and looking at you know, these data I had written down when you graduated college and got your PhD, so much has changed in those 30 years. Technology has really been a friend of what you're trying to do.

SPEAKER_00 29:05

It really is. And and as it's changed, so of course, the the sort of uh the depletion of the resources and all marine resources generally um has increased because of the increasing population, more people fishing. So it's good and bad. Um and that's why data becomes so important, because you can only make uh resource management decisions based on data. And without the data, you're you're really just guessing. It's the same on land with hunting and ducks and deer and everything else. You know, your your data collection is is the vital um tool that you use to better manage any kind of uh resource, natural resource that you're going to harvest.

SPEAKER_04 29:45

Yeah, and if you're trying to create an argument for you know for change, uh without that data, nobody will even listen to it. That's right.

SPEAKER_00 29:52

Well, in the same way that the hunters, you know, are the gamekeepers, so to speak, of you know, the animals that you like to hunt, it's the same for the anglers too. And um you just pour in more education about the the life history of these animals to make the us, the user group, more appreciative of the animals that we like to hunt and kill or or catch and eat, and um and do it with with respect and with um some sort of sustainable system, whatever you develop, you know, whether it's on land or sea, it's it's gotta last, it's gotta be endurable and sustainable.

SPEAKER_08 30:31

That's that's that's the word right there, sustainable. So I was guilty being naive that why do we have such fishing regulations? I mean, the oceans are so vast we can't possibly hurt the population. Well, guess what? I was I was so wrong. So wrong. Yeah, and so I've learned obviously by listening to people such as you. Um and I can remember how even our own fishing, I know it's not a worldly thing, but we we just really understand what how far south the the red fish and speckled trout and everything along the coast got. And then along came GCCA. And I remember, you know, my dad's from Mobile, so a lot of people mobile are big, you know, coast fishermen people, and they were touting this organization, and next thing you know, we got regulations, and the next thing you know, it was no time when the fishing rebounded, just what like four or five years after they started regulating the harvest and the catches down there and then eliminated you know commercial fishing of them. Yeah, it's I was just amazed at the difference that it made. And it it woke me up to how it does how fragile even our oceans are to consumptive fishing, just like consumptive hunting is. And uh, you know, it if if the the uh my point in saying all this is that if as vast as the oceans are, two-thirds of the world, deeper than we can even fathom, literally, and it's fragile and needs regulations, and we need to be so careful and and respectful of the resource.

SPEAKER_00 32:06

Everything you've said there is true.

SPEAKER_08 32:07

Uh hunting hunting is even more so because it's more limited. And so uh it just really screams that we have no matter what we do with our wildlife on the consumptive basis, fishing, hunting doesn't matter. We have got to be conscious of the resource first over our own you know sport.

SPEAKER_00 32:27

Yeah, I I think the real difference between hunting you know animals on land and uh in the ocean is that typically nowadays you you have very particular directed um hunting for different species, different times of year, um, all sorts of you know size limits and so on regulations required. You don't have the indiscriminate fishing that we have in the ocean, uh mostly by commercial fishing, which is very destructive. And you're you're wasting a lot of life uh by using you know bottom trawling and long lines and gill nets and all of that stuff. The gill net ban in Florida was very instrumental in raising back all the levels of all kinds of fish from bait fish to the big predators that you know we like to catch. And once you uh can eradicate that from the ocean, things are going to happen naturally, but also you've got to have some other protections in place. So you have to have what we call marine protected areas, um, especially in the productive places, i.e., on continental shelves where all your primary productivity is happening, so that they actually feed the areas that where you allow fishing to happen. Um because in the long run, you cannot, you know, you cannot sustain fishing without protections in the long run. It just doesn't work.

SPEAKER_03 33:44

Wow. Yeah. So uh Dr. Harvey, let me ask you this. So the the these these billfish that we have all been fascinated by.

SPEAKER_00 37:00

They're amazing animals. They are.

SPEAKER_03 37:02

So it sounds like there's places all over the world where a guy could travel Australia, obviously, and uh off the coast of Africa. But are these fish in more places than people realize, but they just but maybe there's just not access to go fish for them in those places?

SPEAKER_00 37:18

That that's great. And you you you picked two very high-end destinations, of course. I mean, closer to home, the entire Central America, Caribbean, um, any tropical belt around the world has billfish. Uh, there are, as I said earlier, four species of Marliners. One one cosmopolitan species of sailfish, but maybe two different ones. You've got all the other associated fish. And there have been in the last 20 years several different different socioeconomic surveys on the value of the living fish. Because catch and release has become so sustainable and so practiced in nearly all of these places, um, you can catch billfish time and time again, and they survive the trauma of being caught. So that's one aspect of it. Secondly, they make it illegal to land any fish at all from a commercial perspective because, and I think the the last survey was done in Central America, Guatemala, comes to mind, Costa Rica as well, you might get$50 for a landed sailfish, but it's going to cost you as an angler about$2,000 to catch that sailfish. And you're not killing it, you can let them go again. So this trend has been assumed all around the world now, from Australia to the Azores, Madeira, Canaries, Bermuda, you come across to the Western Atlantic, Caribbean, uh, and the Eastern Pacific, which is your best area, from Mexico down to Peru, you have fantastic billfishing opportunities, which is why we spend so much time there. And people are realizing all these um countries are are making laws now making it um illegal to kill billfish. And so you leave it for a recreational resource because it's it's a high-end ecotourism activity.

SPEAKER_05 39:06

It is very uh economically. I mean, yeah, I'm sure convincing those those populations of people that exist in that area, you can kill it and make$150 or whatever it is for fish selling the meat or catch it 10 times and make what exactly.

SPEAKER_08 39:20

Exactly. The plane fare, the hotel rooms, and all the other stuff that goes with the city.

SPEAKER_05 39:25

Well, even just the fishermen themselves.

SPEAKER_08 39:27

You can go catch that fish. It's charter. Yeah, charter boats get a massive premium for the I don't think they've ever been able to quantify the ripple effect of the fish. No, and I mean fishing, they really hadn't.

SPEAKER_00 39:37

So, you know, we have we have um obviously the limitation with every country is it has control over its 200-mile, what we call exclusive economic zone. And beyond that, it's a free-for-all. And that is the challenge nowadays in terms of fishery management, is it's a free-for-all, and you get a lot of um mostly, you know, Asian countries uh fishing um sometimes with with permits, sometimes without, but more often without. Um we do a lot of work in the Galapagos right now, tracking sharks, silkies, silky sharks and hammerhead sharks, the scalloped hammerhead. And the amount of uh illegal commercial activity that's surrounding the Galapagos right now is quite astounding, to be honest with you. Illegal, unreported, and unlicensed fishing are some of the biggest issues that we still face in the open ocean.

SPEAKER_05 40:29

Where do swordfish fit into that? Because they're obviously a billfish and they're still commercially and recreational harvested. How does that fit in uh to the whole scheme?

SPEAKER_00 40:41

That's a great question. Thank you for asking because I I was careful not to mention them in the group of billfish. They are they are a similar-looking fish, but they are not related to the billfishes at all. Learn something. It's an example of what we call convergent evolution, where um two animals have arrived at the same sort of look morphologically through completely different um evolutionary channels. So if you look at them, their physiology, their anatomy is completely different, and their life history is different. So the swordfish is a deep water animal. It lives in very deep water, adapted to do so, um, has special blood systems, eye systems, um, is really a most robust and I don't know how to put this, um, a durable animal. It can switch depths within with a blink of an eye. He doesn't suffer from you know uh barotrauma from changes of depths like a fish with a swim bladder would. Um they live in all oceans of the world, so from cold, temperate to tropical. Um they they're they're caught, they're found everywhere. Um they are good to eat, as people have found out, and that's why sometimes there's been resource issues with swordfish. Um they're mostly caught on long lines because they happen to uh leave the deep in the day in the nighttime to come up to the surface. Uh they they feed up at the surface uh near the near the surface at the nighttime, and in the daytime, people catch them deep dropping down at 1,500 feet, 1800 feet, where it's black, it's pitch black down there. My daughter actually caught one of the biggest swordfish I've ever seen, uh 650 pounds, uh deep dropping off Cancun one day. Uh it took her three and a half hours to catch it, but um, it was an amazing fish to see, fish of a lifetime. Um, the biggest ones these days are caught off uh Eastern Australia, Tasmania, um somewhere around there, some really big oh, New Zealand, of course, is a big place for them. But you get them right off the coast of Florida, all the way up the um the Gulf Stream.

SPEAKER_05 42:56

Yeah, all the way up to the stream.

SPEAKER_00 43:00

All through the Gulf.

SPEAKER_05 43:02

So they're everywhere. Is it not as much of a faux pas to catch and keep?

SPEAKER_00 43:07

Definitely not, and that's why we whack Jessica's fish, because it's their fair game. It's like catching a wahoo or a or a tuna, you know, or a mahi.

SPEAKER_04 43:16

That'll fill the freezer. Oh, yeah, well.

SPEAKER_00 43:18

Oh, yeah. We we gave that one away. It's in uh one of my books. Um it's called The Underwater World. It's a chapter on it, it's called Um Fish of a Lifetime.

SPEAKER_05 43:28

Yeah, our buddies with the Mexican Gulf down in out of Venice catch them. They're whole fleet of buses.

SPEAKER_04 43:33

They're rarely over 200 pounds.

SPEAKER_05 43:36

Yeah, 200's a big one, I think. Around there. I would say we caught one. You know, the electric wheel caught one.

SPEAKER_06 43:43

Sword fishing is not like I caught it. You know, I happen to be standing beside the ride. But I think that's happened, what it is.

SPEAKER_00 43:50

No, no, Jessica caught that one. I got a picture of it right here, actually, right beside my my computer. But um, no, she wound that one in full time. Um, yeah, you get a lot of small ones. Uh they don't mature until they're about 120, 140 pounds. So, you know, you catch it if you're out there and you catch a 70 pounder, you should let them go, really.

SPEAKER_08 44:10

Yeah, yeah. Taxy, you got a question? Well, you know, me the Bobby too, the the eternal daydreamer. So I was listening to all this about um protections within maybe 200 miles, but then the uncharted waters. Yeah, the uncharted waters. But you know, it seems that we have multilateral multination agreements with regard to climate the climate accord or pollution agreements with all these countries. Why couldn't we, if somebody put the initiative together, you know, the countries encircling the Atlantic or some some some areas to try to do something collectively.

SPEAKER_00 44:51

Right.

SPEAKER_08 44:51

You know, and I know enforcement in the high seas would be tough, but with satellite surveillance, I bet they could.

SPEAKER_00 44:58

Yep. And with drones too, in the future, long-range drones, yeah. It's it's gonna happen eventually. You know, right now the the measures of data collection and enforcement are ineffective, and that's why we have a problem. Um, but for in the Atlantic, for example, there's the uh International Um Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic tuners and tuna-like fishes, which happens to cover uh some sharks and some billfish as well. And there's a I think 55 or 56 countries that are you know signed on, but it's a voluntary thing, and you don't have to obey the regulations, and so it's toothless, you know?

SPEAKER_08 45:36

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Without consequences, you're not gonna stop the worst of the worst. So there's not a game warden out there in that. But you know what? I'm telling you, the game warden's coming from satellites. Yes, they can actually they can read what caliber bullet you're putting in your gun if they want to, Bobby.

SPEAKER_00 45:52

There you go.

SPEAKER_08 45:53

You know, so they could they could do it if we had the collective will of our nation and some others.

SPEAKER_00 45:59

Yeah. So it's it's all gonna happen.

SPEAKER_08 46:03

Um that's awesome.

SPEAKER_00 46:04

I I think that, but in in combination with that, is is better education uh worldwide on the value of of marine life generally, um and you know, better enforcement, of course, but education is gonna be the key. You're gonna have the next generation really you know wanting to learn about uh the life history of all these animals. Um, and that's our big push now at the Guy Harvey Foundation. My daughter runs our marine science education initiative in Florida, and we have gone uh through two channels. One is electronically via discovery education, we can reach millions of kids and teachers.

SPEAKER_08 46:44

Awesome.

SPEAKER_00 46:44

Um but all on the ground we go county by county and we deal with all the um you know each each organization within a within the county, the um what do they call them, the superintendents. And we we teach the teachers a curriculum that we have built uh how to teach marine sciences, and we've reached about 50 percent of. The counties in Florida now. And once it it really has the effect we want, we want to export that to other states in the south, you know, south east and south, because that's where a lot of this fishing activity happens. Um, kids are fascinated by sharks and stuff like that, and so um they're all keen to learn, and we have a ready and willing audience, and it's just a matter of manpower right now. So I think Texas is going to be uh a very influential state to work on as well.

SPEAKER_03 47:38

Sure. Well, well, since you mentioned sharks, I wanted to ask you about sharks around the world. But when we we talked to our friends that fish uh in the Keys and they talk about how bad the sharks are, and yeah, and and you can't hardly get a fish to the boat in some places, but and we also hear that there, you know, people don't see sharks in other parts of the world like they used to. What what seems to be going on?

SPEAKER_00 48:02

Well, the the overall picture is that um, and this comes up in my my documentary too. Um we infiltrated the Hong Kong fin trade, which is the the shark fin trade, which is the epicenter of of the shark fin trade around the world in 2004, 2005, um, to the accounting section and got a hold basically by extrapolation on the number of sharks being killed a year. And it was between 40 and 70 million sharks per year being killed in the shark fin trade alone. That's discounting all the other ways of killing them. So that's that's a totally unsustainable activity. And that's why you know there used to be millions and millions and millions of sharks around everywhere in a in a pre you know human world, um, working in equilibrium with all the other animals. And so they were not, you know, uh they're not depleting you know the tuners or the snappers or groupers or whatever else you you like to catch. Everything works in a balance, and we upset that balance, and we we cause a huge uh deterioration in numbers uh in many different places uh through uh overfishing and wastefulness. And for those of your audience who don't know what shark finning is, it's a diabolical practice where people set long lines, which is indiscriminate in itself because they catch turtles and manta rays and other things too, seabirds. You you bring the the shark on board alive, they they beat it over the head with a bat, they cut the fins off while it's still struggling on the deck. There's tons of footage of this. Um, and then they throw the carcass overboard. So you you're discarding all this protein uh in favor of a very expensive delicacy, let's call it that, uh, in the Asian market, where they turn the shark fin into a soup. A pretty tasteless soup, a product that's supposed to you know boost male competency and all sorts of other cool things. Well, no one so because of the because of the level of demand, it creates you know the the trafficking um of so many shark fins, dried shark fins. And they they fetch two three hundred dollars a kilo. Wow. It's like it's like cocaine, you know. So that that's the background on your question, what happened to sharks. So in many places, conservation methods were put in place after the obvious research work that I keep talking about. And in the southeast of the US, of course, all the different fishery agencies agreed that X, Y, and Z species were under threat of extinction. Some were not so uh threatened. Um, there was selective conservation going on, and over a period of time, 20 or 30 years, the population bounced back because they're long-lived slow-growing animals. They don't pop back in a year or two years, like if you are breeding Mahi-Mahi, for example. Um and so the recovery was slow, but people grew up 30, 40 years ago not seeing many sharks in the southeast, and now they're seeing all these sharks, and they think, wow, it's an infestation. No, it's not. It's just that they've come back to what they were, uh, or near what they were. And they're not an invasive species. Let's get real here, folks. You know, it's not like the lionfish threat in the Western Atlantic that are an invasive species, causing huge damage that people don't talk about. But sharks, when I was a kid growing up in Jamaica, we couldn't get a black fin tuna to the boat because the silky sharks were always in the schools of black fin tuna. Yeah. So it's, you know, and that was that was 60 years ago. Um, so when there were sharks around. And nowadays diving out here around Cayman Islands, we don't we still don't see adult silky sharks. We see the little baby one three or four feet long. But the big adults are are few and far between. Because there is long lining going on, and people kill sharks still.

SPEAKER_05 52:02

Yeah, and I'm 40, and so growing up on the Gulf, we you know, snapper fishing, you never saw sharks really. I mean, not that much. You do catch one occasionally, but again, that was 30 years ago. I'd have been 10 until I was 20, you know, fishing down there 20, 30 years ago. And now, you know, I think where it gets sideways is isn't because I mean sharks are an indicator of a healthy ecosystem and population, right? But they just weren't around back then, so now everybody coming in on the past 20 years saying we never usually saw these, and where it gets sideways is like you said, with black fin, you can't catch yellow fin, any sort of tuna in most snapper without getting sharked. So everybody gets mad about the bringing up a half-eaten fish, which it is, I mean, it's a struggle.

SPEAKER_00 52:47

But that used to happen.

SPEAKER_04 52:48

So um yeah, everybody's gotta eat, right? Right.

SPEAKER_00 52:52

Well said that you know, you you gotta change your behavior too. You gotta fish differently, use stronger line, wine faster. Um crank them in. Crank them in. Change the area you fish. Um and uh a lot of things. Sharks are they're not they're smart animals. So but what we're seeing is is is uh shifting baseline syndrome in reverse. Shifting baseline for anything, whether it's you know, traffic or development or whatever is you're used to seeing what's around you right now, and five years ago you've forgotten the abundance. Um, and 10 years ago you really have forgotten the abundance of what species were like. We see the same thing here too. Um, and people just accept what they see around them for the day. So you your your baseline becomes different from what it was five years ago, 10 years, or 15 years ago. But this is in reverse because you never saw sharks 15, 20 years ago, and now you're seeing a lot more, so it's in reverse.

SPEAKER_05 53:53

Well, they seem to be very healthy now, at least in the Gulf where we fish.

SPEAKER_00 53:58

They're doing fine, but we we haven't got to the point where a lot of people are suggesting we've got to start culling them, which is ridiculous. We were there already, we still are, and um in many parts of the world they they are being annihilated by in huge numbers still, especially in the open ocean.

SPEAKER_03 54:15

So do you do you think can you point to uh you're diving with these billfish and these shellfish? Did all that did were you able to take away things that made you a better fisherman watching those fish underwater?

SPEAKER_00 54:30

Absolutely, another great question. Um it's it's amazing how how they feed differently, sailfish versus marlin. Uh sailfish and white marlin typically um they they grab the the bait, or that we use like a bonita belly strip we are using for teasing, um, and they they they chew it, they do this. Let me get it in front of the camera, and they they stop swimming in a kind of a head-up position like this every single time. Uh so when you fed a bait to a fish, it's got it, it stopped swimming, and the line coming off the reel is because you're moving away from the fish. Once they swallow it down, they start swimming again, and you feel that acceleration. Um, and that's when you put the the reel into gear. The blue marlin now is a is a is a different cattle of fish altogether. They are so fast and so aggressive, and we feed them small yellow fins, you know, three pound, four pound, five pound, even live, no hook in it. And you watch them, they catch it, boom, this they they crush it, and you see a big puff of blood, and they just go like a bast. You know, it's gone down that mouth in like a second. You I mean less than that. You don't need to give them three or four seconds or ten second drop back, especially with a circle. You can come tight as they eat it because they they're stopping, they're putting it down the hatch right away, and then they're turning. There's no mucking around with them. They're amazing animals.

SPEAKER_03 56:01

So, what do they use the bill for?

SPEAKER_00 56:04

The bill is primarily it's uh it's uh um an adaptation for speed, for hydride increased hydrodynamic ability. You know, they they swim very fast. Like a tuna or ahoo or barracco, they have a very pointed face. That's also effective. But billfish also have the bill, they use it in offense um for feeding. That's sailfish, especially, by the way, not so much blue marlins or black marlins. Um, I've seen we film and we have it on film, sailfish. They use their bill 80% of the time as a as a as a wand to strike schooling fish. That's what they're good at doing. They get into these schools, they're cooperatively feeding, as I was saying, the signaling color changes and bing, and I'm going in. And they put their bill into the bait that's fleeing, and they give it one or two premeditated swipes like that. It's not a wild thrashing going on. They actually hit individual fish, and you hear it underwater, you and the fish spins out like a like a dove you just shot out of a school of birds, flock of birds, and um, they spin around and eat it, but then the next guy comes in, and that's how they rotate. So in Mexico and Costa Rica, we film them doing that with the bill, and like I said, they do it 80% of the time. The marlins that are just as fast, if not faster, seem to grab their prey and hold on to it rather than use the bill. I've never filmed a blue marlin using its bill to hit anything, but they can, or a black. The other important thing is is that many of them have broken bills, as we we talked about earlier, and they're not emaciated or slim or look like they missed a few meals um because they don't have a bill. They can feed perfectly well without the bill, which shows you their incredible speed allows them just to catch stuff and just gulf it down. Both sailfish and marlin. And in fact, one day in in uh off Isla Maharis, we're filming sailfish uh with a with a bait school, and a sailfish with a broken bill comes up, thinks it's got a bill, and is striking at the at the sardine. I had to laugh underwater because it didn't know it had a broken bill.

SPEAKER_08 58:19

It's like a comedy fit fencing uh competition with your sword broken off halfway.

SPEAKER_00 58:24

Exactly. So that that to me was like, you know, okay, so when did you learn and when did you just stop doing that and just start grabbing stuff?

SPEAKER_08 58:33

Did you say you y'all got footage of that? Oh, yeah. Oh, that has to be. I have to I gotta look that up. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 58:38

We have a lot of footage. Yeah. Richie, did you have a question?

SPEAKER_02 58:42

Uh yeah. So uh you earlier you mentioned uh the foundation that your daughter runs and a lot of the research, research that you've been doing. But can you talk specifically about the Guy Harvey Research Institute?

SPEAKER_00 58:54

Yeah. It was started in 1999, so that's 27 years ago at Nova Southeastern University. And you got some t-shirts there on the table in front of you. So we took uh some of the royalties uh from the apparel sales and put it into existing research projects at Nova uh for a couple of years, and then I formalized the whole relationship with Nova so that we'd have our own name on all the um publications that we'd have uh ensuing from all the work we we we do. And you know that the the currency of of science is uh your publications, so it's a it's a meaningful target to aim at. And we've now published, I think, 185 peer-reviewed papers in in 26 years, which is pretty good. Oh, awesome.

SPEAKER_08 59:42

That's amazing.

SPEAKER_00 59:44

Yeah, no other brand has done that you know, in our genre, and it's it's kind of um it's our thing. Um, so the GHRI was basically the platform on which uh to which we would donate provide money, raise other money. Like we have um, you know, we have a specialty license plate in Florida. We want to get one actually in South Carolina and Texas as well, um, because that those monies go straight to the foundation to help us with education and research work. Um, as the business grew, so we could put more money into it because it's a percentage. And we sponsored a lot of different shark research work because many species were data deficient, and I think probably the most instructive one was on the Mako shark itself, which um suffered considerably in the Western Atlantic. That was all managed by uh Professor Mahmoud Chivji at Nova Southeastern University with his team. Uh, and we helped them. We did a lot of tag deployments, we did a lot of the research work, especially in Panama right now, on Black Marlin, uh, Mahi Mahis, sharks, roosterfish, some of the inshore game fish there. Um we're working with the Hart Institute at Texas AM now. Um, they're going to help us on that big project. Uh, we have other people working on sharks. So as we expanded, of course, you see more opportunities for research work, more need for it. You can't do it all yourself because you're limited by money. So we would do collaborations with other like-minded organizations. And that's how it's grown, and we thrive doing that. So, we're are you still painting today? Every day. I love painting. I got I got a I've been here for a month. I haven't been on a plane. I'm so glad. Especially with all the um kafuffle going on. Um, I love painting, and so I do big stuff. I work in five different media. You asked, I think very early on if I'm self-taught. Yes, I am. And I I love pen and ink work. I love doing watercolor, which I was very afraid of when I was starting out in the late 80s. It's now my favorite medium. Um, but many of the fish that we paint are large, and so they demand a big canvas. And so I do 15-footers, 20-footers, oh wow, uh big feet, you know, uh uh predator-prey interactions. You just have to go onto the website to the art section and have a look at some of them.

SPEAKER_05 1:04:08

Is it is it the Fort Lauderdale airport where you have the giant mural along the has anybody ever been in there? I think I have. Man, it is a true masterpiece work of art. I mean, it's the entire back wall of an entire airport, an entire scene, floored of Marlin at the top, flounder on the bottom, grouper. It's it's something everybody's there.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:29

It's the Southwest Airlines terminal. Yep. Yeah, it is unreal.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:33

Well, in my research, uh I ran across that you had painted the hull of a of a cruise ship.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:38

Yeah, back in 2015, Norwegian uh cruise line came to me and said uh, because they paint all their hulls, um, they wanted to have a more sort of environmentally messaging um subject matter than just abstract. So one of the guys, the big fisherman, uh Bob Becker, his name is he was a SVP, and uh he said to the the guys, get Harvey to paint your ship for you. Um which we did. We I went to the the German shipyard in northern Germany where they were building these ships. I've never seen anything like it. They had two ships under construction under the same roof in the biggest building you can imagine, and this the coordination of these people and these huge things. Um anyway, it was for a photo up because they were painting the hull at the time, and um it was good. Put a 150-foot sailfish on the bow. The eye alone was the size of me, you know. I'm sure you can see pictures of it.

SPEAKER_07 1:05:37

That's insane.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:38

Um and then that we went to the the um not the launch, the inaugural voyage came to Miami in November 2015. But the best part about that whole relationship is that we had a Guy Harvey channel on the ship, so your in-cabin uh TV had a 24-hour loop of all our content and media, and uh Jessica talking about her stuff, and um the mums and dads, because we go on the ship a lot, I do live painting and all that. The mums and dads would come up and say, the kids just love all your stories and your your footage on sharks and the underwater content you developed, and it's it's really they're learning so much from it. It was probably our biggest success. Wow, and that's an ongoing relationship. Yep.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:25

You know, I dream of one day having a 24-hour gamekeeper landing where somebody could listen to us talk about all this stuff for 20 hours. I don't know if they'd listen to us for 24 hours. We're looking to get we're looking to get them from the city. They tune out of us the ocean. Yeah, we we put them to sleep.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:46

No, well, the you know, it's it's multidimensional. So there's there's there's the excitement, the aesthetic value, as you know, the the aura of filming and swimming with sharks or billfish, uh, the educational part, and there's an art component too. So um that's how we're able, how these field trips or ex um expeditions are so valuable for us all. We generate so much from them.

SPEAKER_03 1:07:11

So, Dr. Harvey, let's do this. We should have done this at the beginning, and I was so excited to have you as a guest, I just completely forgot. But we always Dudley always asks some rapid-fire questions that we get to know you a little bit better.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:23

Now you're gonna catch me out.

SPEAKER_03 1:07:25

Yeah, that's right. And it's brought to you our friends at Nutrient Ag Solutions sponsor this segment, and we appreciate that so much from them.

SPEAKER_04 1:07:32

Okay, Mr. Guy, are you ready?

SPEAKER_00 1:07:36

I'll give it my best shot.

SPEAKER_04 1:07:38

All right, name a current favorite local lunch spot.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:45

You're you're talking in Florida or somewhere, right? Besides winter. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:07:50

All right. Have you ever hunted wild turkeys?

SPEAKER_00 1:07:54

No, but I've taken pictures of them in the Everglades.

SPEAKER_04 1:07:58

That works. Uh have you ever eaten boiled peanuts on a boat?

SPEAKER_00 1:08:05

Not on a boat, but I've definitely eaten them somewhere.

SPEAKER_04 1:08:08

Okay. Um, aside from podcast, name something about your life or job that can be not so fun at times.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:19

Traveling uh anywhere these days on the airplane.

SPEAKER_04 1:08:23

Okay. Name a fish species in your area that you like to eat that's fairly sustainable and freezes well. Yellow Fentina, uh Wahoo. Okay. Uh when was the last time you went freshwater fishing?

SPEAKER_00 1:08:40

Quite a while back. Uh, would have been in Florida for bus, but uh to be honest with you, I've neglected that. Okay. Um, it would it would have been it would have been salmon fishing, actually, up in British Columbia. Sorry.

SPEAKER_04 1:08:52

There you go. Have you ever contacted Siguatera?

SPEAKER_00 1:08:57

Have I contracted it? Yes. Yes, because in Jamaica we used to eat barracudas a lot.

SPEAKER_04 1:09:05

Okay, I'll have to ask you about that later. Um, what is the largest fish or sea animal you've ever been in close proximity to?

SPEAKER_00 1:09:15

Either a sperm whale or a whale shark or probably a humpback whale. I'd say a humpback whale.

SPEAKER_04 1:09:23

Okay. Is there one particular boat you've owned over the years that holds a special place in your heart? What was it and what was its name?

SPEAKER_00 1:09:33

My current boat is a 33-foot dusky made in Fort Lauderdale, and we've caught 61 blue marlin on it. Um last year we caught the biggest one I've ever caught on the boat I've been on in the Caribbean, which is about 600 pounds. So we we're not big boaters. We living in the Caribbean, you have a center console is adequate. We do a lot of shallow water work, we do a lot of diving, but we do a lot of offshore game fishing as well. It's it kind of fits a bill. Um if I get invited onto a bigger boat, I'll go when I'm not a big boater.

SPEAKER_04 1:10:07

So that's your baby. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:09

I'm putting it into context.

SPEAKER_04 1:10:10

All right, more food. Crab with a K, Surimi, the hot dog of the sea. Hard pass, or it has its place.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:20

Hard pass. Thank you. What what would you say? K Rab. What would you say?

SPEAKER_04 1:10:26

Uh what would you say is currently one of the biggest threats to the ocean life in general?

SPEAKER_00 1:10:33

The human population. There you go. Yes.

SPEAKER_04 1:10:36

Uh, let's see. And last but not least, have you ever seen an unidentifiable object either in the air or out at sea in the water? Ooh.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:46

No.

SPEAKER_04 1:10:47

Okay. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:10:48

Good answers. Yeah. I think he's telling you no. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:54

Yeah. Yeah. I I don't live in in America, so but I have favorite eating places. Um I should have answered that question: yard house. I like that, Brian. Okay. Yardhouse. Yeah, put that in there. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:11:09

All right, Dr. Harvey, we've got one more little segment here. We're going to turn it over to Richie. We're going to ask you a trivia question. This is going to be like so easy for you. I'm embarrassed it's so easy.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:20

All right. So first off, here we have a listener who left a review on YouTube. He uh watched episode 433, uh Turkey Season updated. And Daring Sinclair. I really enjoyed the podcast. It was fun just hearing your stories. Keep up the good work. So what did Daring Sinclair win, Mr. Cole? Solani. Oh, yeah. You can win one of these beardmasters.

SPEAKER_03 1:11:42

You can uh hang three turkey hands in a fan. There it is, right? Really not. So these people are a new licensee, and uh it's called Illusion Hunting Systems.

SPEAKER_06 1:11:52

Yeah, they've got deer products and turkey products, and it's in our favorite bottom line cameras on there?

SPEAKER_08 1:11:57

I think so. Well, you could fill that up in five years' time, Bobby. Probably so.

SPEAKER_03 1:12:00

Maybe if I get lucky. I don't know. That was pretty hateful time. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:12:09

This is way better than just putting the fan on the wall. Two shit. Yeah. Give it some love. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:12:13

Put it in a frame.

SPEAKER_06 1:12:15

Put some bottom land on it.

SPEAKER_03 1:12:16

All right, Richie, let's get let's let's ask him his question.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:18

All right. So earlier you mentioned you're a fan of boiled peanuts, huh? So our trivia is brought to us by our friends at The Peanut Patch. All right. So today's trivia uh since a specific question. We'll give you our guest a little bit of latitude uh either way. All right. So how much is the earth covered in salt water? What percentage? What percentage of the earth is covered in saltwater? Salt water.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:49

Didn't 75% approximately. He nailed it right out of the gate.

SPEAKER_06 1:12:58

I mean, what did y'all expect? I mean that that's a big number. That is a big number. I think it's something that you've just newly discovered because you've been talking about it for two days about highlight. Did y'all know there's more water on the earth than the water?

SPEAKER_03 1:13:09

And there's not that much fresh water. That's right. 2% is fresh water. Yep. That's right. Look, he'd answered next week's trivia question already.

SPEAKER_06 1:13:19

The man's a fisheries guy. What'd you do? The man lives in the water.

SPEAKER_03 1:13:22

You know, I really wanted to go to the Caymans and do this one live. I'm sure you did, Bobby. Maybe we do the episode two there.

SPEAKER_06 1:13:28

It's a good thing you don't have turkeys down there, Bob. That's right. You'd be all in there.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:32

Well, I I was expecting you know you to ask about do I ever do any hunting? Because um, you know, growing up in Jamaica, we had very good bird shooting of doves and pigeons. And my dad was an incredible, incredible shot. And uh he taught us all the protocols, you know, etiquette of of uh bird hunting, and uh we didn't have any land animals, of course, but um we loved it. And when I went to university, I would I would bummer ride and go shoot pheasants or grouse or something with anybody who could who could do that.

SPEAKER_08 1:14:04

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:04

Um it's the one thing I I kind of miss um growing up with our kids here. So we have a I've got a very active gun club here in Cayman, and we um we signed up for that. We do a lot of clay shooting. Oh, yeah. And both Jessica and Alex, they love doing it, but we just never done it in the field, so to speak. And um it's a it's part of moving here um that that I kind of miss was the the bird hunting and the and the the sort of community get together around that.

SPEAKER_08 1:14:34

It's a social event, so it is it is special.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:37

I mean, how we you know we we pick them and eat them, so it was oh they're delicious. So good.

SPEAKER_06 1:14:44

Yeah, we're actually getting starting to think about getting prepared for dove season around here. It won't be long.

SPEAKER_03 1:14:49

Sunflower time to play small flowers. Well, does does anybody have any Jessie got another question? Anybody have any local?

SPEAKER_06 1:14:57

I've got one question. I just you know, listening, I love the water, I love scuba dive and just and this is kind of off the cuff a little bit, but any uh sunscreen recommendations you have just use it, just use it, there you go.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:11

No, you see, we grew up in in Jamaica without that, and as kids, and we were paying for it now, but um it it didn't exist in this in the 50s and 60s.

SPEAKER_06 1:15:21

So just go with the hundred, is that what we go with the hundreds?

SPEAKER_00 1:15:23

Absolutely, and and wear a face mask and cover up. Yep. There you go.

SPEAKER_03 1:15:29

So Dr. Harvey, uh uh noticed today that you uh went to school in Aberdeen, Scotland. Not Aberdeen, Mississippi. Yeah, I know what you're thinking. No, but so all my life as I was young, I would buy these cricket hooks, and they were they were called Aberdeen. That that was a style. Is that have anything to do with Aberdeen, Scotland at all?

SPEAKER_00 1:15:48

I I would dodge it very much. Yeah. Good try, Bob.

SPEAKER_04 1:15:53

Yeah, I went there last summer, my mom and my family, and uh it was a really neat town. Uh the the boat building industry is huge there.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:03

It is. And when when we were there as students, they it was they had the largest fish market in Europe, so every day we go down as students to go and measure stuff and take samples and do all this stuff. It was pretty exhilarating. By by the time I left in the late 70s, the oil was just coming into you know reality. So uh a new industry took over, basically.

SPEAKER_03 1:16:28

Wow. Wow. Well, Dr. Guy Harvey, we have thoroughly enjoyed uh having you on.

SPEAKER_08 1:16:34

And uh I think tax- Yeah, yeah, just two observations. One is um listening to you today was so uh enriching, I guess is the right word, but um I say it, you reminded me of what I've and it reminds me to say this to everybody here, and I've always said to them that um what a gift it is, you know, because the one common denominator we all have is our time. The greatest resource we have, the the most important one. Um so when you can spend your time in life and you look back at your life, I'm thinking of him, and know that you made a difference in what you love. That is a gift. And so that that has to be so cool. To me, watching you talk about your history, it kind of gives me chill bumps knowing what an incredible difference you've made and are making in what you love. And the second thing is um this morning I had a very spiritual experience. I killed a turkey and I went to my dad's grave and spent time with him there. And his his most famous saying to the world, it became very famous, is the good that men do will live long after they're gone. And that also is very compelling to me. That is something you will always be known by. So I just wanted to kind of could just congratulate you on an unbelievable great life towards something you love, and that's an inspiration to me and all of us.

SPEAKER_00 1:17:57

Well, I appreciate you saying that. Thank you so much. And um, when you do get a chance to see our new documentary, um it's our like I said earlier, it's our 40th anniversary, so it's timely. Um but you would just see how much of a team has has been around me all this time. Did I I I can I can relate.

SPEAKER_06 1:18:18

Yeah, and how do we how do we check the documentary out? Is it going to be on a streaming platform or it will be eventually?

SPEAKER_00 1:18:25

Uh it's just it's just out, and that we're still tweaking some of it. We had a you know a big showing here on Friday night. We had like 450 people come, which is half the island.

SPEAKER_03 1:18:35

Well half the island. Well, I've got just one last one last quick question. So if if you're sitting down to a blank canvas and you don't have any uh I got I need to do this or I need to do that, what's the one fish that you just enjoy painting above all of them?

SPEAKER_00 1:18:50

Any of the billfish, really. They're they're spectacular animals. Um they're big, they're fast, they're beautiful, they demand a big canvas, like I was saying. And if I can paint them life size, so much the better. How about that?

SPEAKER_05 1:19:02

That's cool.

SPEAKER_00 1:19:03

All right, Jess, you got anything else you want to ask?

SPEAKER_05 1:19:05

No, appreciate you being on here and being an inspiration.

SPEAKER_08 1:19:11

Yeah, just thanks. Thank you for being you. That's all.

SPEAKER_00 1:19:14

Thank you very much. Couldn't couldn't do it without you. And and on the final note, you know, the the succession is in place with Alex and Jessica because Alex is a good business mind. He works very hard, uh, even though he's got three daughters right now. Unbelievable. I mean, his his life is full. And Jessica is uh a great leader uh of the um the foundation side with all the education and research we do. So um I'm very confident that things will will continue.

SPEAKER_03 1:19:44

That's super cool.

SPEAKER_00 1:19:45

That really is great stuff.

SPEAKER_03 1:19:46

All right, Dr. Gal Harvey, we have thoroughly enjoyed it, no doubt about it.

SPEAKER_00 1:19:50

It's been an honor and a pleasure to be on your show. Thank you again, Bobby.

SPEAKER_06 1:19:53

We got a take him bird. Right, we got you. Yeah, take him bird, huh?

SPEAKER_00 1:19:57

We should do that. We would love to do that. Let's go. Wouldn't that be fun? We can make that happen.

SPEAKER_08 1:20:01

And we're gonna have to fly him up here on a private aircraft, too. He's not going through the airport. Yeah, okay. And I can't say I'll blame him. Yeah, I don't either.

SPEAKER_03 1:20:09

That sounds like fun. Well, I hope we can make that happen. Yeah, that'd be awesome. Why don't you say goodbye, Dudley? Goodbye, Dudley. Get us out of here, Richie.

SPEAKER_01 1:20:15

Thanks for tuning in to this week's episode of the Gamekeeper Podcast. And be sure to tune in again. Subscribe to Game Keeper Farming for Wildlife magazine, and don't miss the Monte Oak Properties Fistful of Dirt podcast with my good buddy, Ronnie Cut Strickler.