Fishing tournament defends disqualifying blue marlin worth $3.5 million: ‘The rule is there to protect the fish’

By Eric Levenson, CNN

(CNN) — The president of the Big Rock Blue Marlin tournament on Wednesday defended its controversial decision to disqualify a 619.4-pound blue marlin that would have earned the fishermen about $3.5 million, saying the rules on “mutilation” are there for a reason.

“This rule is there to protect the fish so nobody gets an advantage. When you fight and land this fish, you have fought 100% of the fish,” tournament President Emery Ivey said in a video posted to Facebook. “At (no) time during the fight of the fish did something happen that would give you an advantage over the next guy.”

The video was released days after the crew of the Sensation caught the massive marlin as part of the weeklong Big Rock tournament based in Morehead City, North Carolina. The marlin gave the crew a six-plus hour fight in the final hours of the final day of the tournament, and they returned to dock amid cheering crowds for what they thought would be a celebratory event.

However, the weighmaster – a neutral, referee-like figure – noticed the marlin had two significant chunks taken out of it on the underside and its tail. After consulting experts, the tournament disqualified the fish “due to mutilation caused by a shark or other marine animal.”

“It was deemed that the fish was mutilated before it was landed or boated and therefore it was disqualified,” the tournament said.

The Sensation would have won $3.5 million for the catch, including over $700,000 for the first boat to catch a marlin weighing over 500 pounds. Instead, the crew of Sushi, who brought in a 484.5-pound blue marlin, won first place in the tournament – as well as prize money totaling $2,769,438.

In his video Wednesday, Ivey explained the idea behind the rules on mutilation. Anytime a fish is on the line and is bitten by a predator or comes into contact with a boat or propeller, that is grounds for disqualification, he said.

“It’s never fun but it’s just part of the sport. It’s no different than if you’re playing golf and you hit it out of bounds. You can’t just go pick the ball up and go put it in bounds and continue play,” he said. “Each rule in each sport is a little bit different. No different in the sport of fishing. We have a set of rules that we follow and everybody agrees as gentlemen to follow them.”

Ivey also went into the specifics of the weighmaster’s decision on Saturday night to disqualify the Sensation’s 619.4-pound blue marlin.

“Unfortunately in this situation, Randy Gregory, our longtime weighmaster and biologist, brought to our attention there was two visible spots: A place on the tail that you could see something had bitten it, and then also a chunk that was probably 10 inches to 7 inches that was taken out right above its anal fin,” he said.

As for the Sensation, the owner, captain and crew have hired Wheatly Law Group to represent them in their efforts to overturn the disqualification and filed a protest of the results on Sunday, attorney Stevenson L. Weeks told CNN.

“We feel like it was taken away from us,” Sensation Capt. Greg McCoy told CNN on Tuesday.

McCoy also noted to CNN that in 2019, a record 914-pound marlin caught by the vessel Top Dog won the Big Rock tournament despite being severely mutilated.

However, Ivey said Wednesday that Top Dog’s marlin was damaged after it had been caught because it was so big it did not fit on the boat.

“(The Sensation’s) situation specifically happened when they were fighting the fish,” Ivey said. “The Top Dog’s fish happened when they brought the fish on the boat. The fish was already boated, the game was already over, and they couldn’t have acquired any penalties because they had already boated the fish.”

The questions about the mutilation rules are not new. In a 2019 YouTube video, Jack Vitek, the director of marketing and chief of staff at the International Game Fish Association, explained it in further detail.

“If a fish has a chunk taken out of it, whether it be by a boat or another fish or shark or whatever, it’s not going to be fighting to its full potential,” he said. “That’s the rationale behind it.”

He noted, though, that wounds from fishing lines or old scars would not disqualify the fish.

“If the fish had been injured or something like that in the past … and it’s been healed, and it’s obviously not a fresh wound, that’s not something that would fall into this rule,” he said.

The Sensation has theorized this marlin’s wounds may have fallen into those categories.

“We don’t know whether that fish was bit before, earlier in the year, the week, or on our hook. We don’t know that,” McCoy said.

Ashley Bleau, the Sensation’s owner, said the line had been wrapped around the marlin’s tail when they brought it up and theorized the injuries may have come from the process of winching it up to the surface.

“I truly believe that it was more so something that ended up possibly happening in the winching process rather than during the fight,” he said.

The-CNN-Wire
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