Sawfish sightings rare in Florida waters

Fort Myers Capt. Steve Waugh told me recently about fishing in the early 1960s as a boy and seeing hundreds of sawfish, a funny-looking fish that is born about 2 feet long and can grow to 20 feet. The fish has a bill-like feature that looks like a saw.

Fast forward to the early ‘90s when Capt. Randall Marsh moved here after college to try his hand as a fishing guide while he figured out what career to pursue. He never left the water and in his 15 years as a guide has seen only three sawfish, including one he caught and released earlier this month

and shared photos of with Florida Weekly.

The two guides’ stories of the oncenumerous and-now-scarce sawfish is sadly becoming more typical. But the state is thankful to anglers such as these and others who are helping document sightings of Florida’s smalltooth sawfish, which is now on the endangered species list.

Smalltooth sawfish caught in the Caloosahatchee recently. COURTESY PHOTO You may have seen the fliers posted at area boat ramps and tackle shops. A sketch of one of these crazy-looking fish by Sarah Erickson appears below the headline “Sawfish Hotline.” Thing is, seeing a sketch is not at all like seeing the real fish.

So when Mr. Marsh hooked one at the mouth of the Caloosahatchee and then got his client, Norman Landsdale of Mount Sterling, Ky., to snap some pictures, it was a rare treat.

The 42-inch fish struck his live bait — a pilchard with its tail cut off. The fish took one run, did a 360 around the boat and then Mr. Marsh jumped in the shallow water and grabbed its tail. Mr. Landsdale hit the shutter. “I know they’re endangered and didn’t want to bring it into the boat; I really wanted a photo,” Mr. Marsh said.

It was an aggressive fish, he said. “I thought it’d be like a shark — you could arch its back and it wouldn’t be able to come all the way around. But it wasn’t like that.” The fish felt like sandpaper — a sharkish-stingray-ish feel.

That makes sense. Sawfish swim like sharks but are actually more closely related to rays, in part because their gill slits are on the bottom of their bodies like stingrays.

Many a smalltooth sawfish have been measured at around 18 feet, according to research by the state Fish and Wildlife Research Institute. They can be more than 20 feet; they can weigh more than 700 pounds.

The reason for the species’ decline off Florida and U.S. shores is because sawfish often were caught as bycatch in commercial and recreational fisheries and because sawfish don’t reproduce very rapidly. They were easily and often unintentionally captured because their saws would become entangled in fishing nets. Sawfish were often landed in recreational fisheries because their saw was a popular trophy item.

So they disappeared.

The three spots where Mr. Marsh has seen sawfish all were within sight of each other where the Caloosahatchee flows into San Carlos Bay. That’s also where Mr. Waugh recalls seeing hundreds of the comic-book-looking fish in the ‘60s. The fish’s saw is used to feed by disrupting the bottom and stirring up prey. The fish also slash through schools of small fish, stunning or cutting them before they gobble them up. That saw also is used for defense against the sawfish’s primary predator: sharks.

“I talked to five guides this morning who’d been guiding for 10 plus years and never even seen one, much less caught one,” said Mr. Marsh, who is on the water 250 days a year and still can’t believe he saw one so close.

He reported the fish to the state and sent in photos. He received three calls back within 24 hours from representative of the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission and the National Sawfish Encounter Data Base.

“I didn’t read my horoscope that day, but I feel lucky to have caught one, to have a picture with one,” Mr. Marsh said.

I’d imagine the state feels lucky to have those photos and the report, too. Although scientists are studying sawfish statewide, the current research project, which is federally funded, focuses on Southwest Florida. There’s a general lack of biological and ecological information on the fish, so it makes it hard for scientists to determine how to help the species recover. 

— Betsy Clayton is a freelancer based on

Pine Island and also is Lee County Parks &

Recreation’s waterways coordinator. Contact

her at boatingbybetsy@yahoo.com.

Reporting Sawfish Sightings

>>What: Florida’s smalltooth sawfish research >>Who: Anglers and boaters are asked to report captures and observations of the endangered species

>>Report: The date and time of the encounter, the location, the estimated length of each sawfish, the water depth and any other relevant details >>Call: (941) 255-7403 >>E-mail: sawfish@myfwc.com >>Online: http://research.myfwc.com/sawfish