Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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If a shark is coming towards you, you know, just most of the time just staying calm and just maintaining eye contact is going to do the trick. It's when people start freaking out and flailing around is when they're like, oh, is that a prey? Why is the energy so high? Why is this thing looking like prey, right?
I mean, I have a hard time getting sharks close to me most of the time because I'm like wanting them to get close.
This is Tanner Mansell. He's been diving with sharks for about 10 years. The first time was in 2016, on vacation in Jupiter, Florida.
We got out there, we jumped in the water, and it was just like these sharks were just swimming within five feet of us, just minding their own business, you know, looking at us, swimming around. But it was this overwhelming feeling of just calmness and peacefulness. You know, it was a high, a literal high that lasted months afterwards.
Tanner had been working a corporate job in Oregon. But after this vacation, he decided he wanted to make a change.
I couldn't go back to what I was doing knowing that that existed. So I just started reading books. I started putting everything I could together to be like, okay, how do I exit, you know, this lifestyle that I'm in and start over completely doing this?
By 2017, Tanner had saved up enough money to move to Florida. Eventually, he started helping out on tours with the same company he'd gone diving with, working with a man named John Moore. John and Tanner would take small groups about four miles offshore in the Gulf Stream. Then they put a cage with fish into the water to attract sharks. Jupiter, Florida, is known for its sharks.
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Chapter 2: What prompted John and Tanner to change their careers?
And, you know, and it's a very thick fishing line. And he pulled and pulled and pulled, and then we got to a shark that was swimming on the line.
Neither of them had seen anything like this before.
I was out there at least five days a week and we'd never seen anything like that because, you know, occasionally, you know, it's Florida and people catch sharks occasionally. But, you know, there are strict regulations for shark fishing. And so we cut that shark free. But that line was attached, you know, to a thick, a very thick line. And so we just started pulling on that thicker line.
And it was one of those where it never ends. Like we pulled it in, we started pulling it, and we got to another shark, which we cut off. And then the line continued. So we realized we found something really, you know, odd out here.
When he looked at the setup a little more, John realized that it looked like a fishing method called longlining. But he'd never seen a long line in this area, and he'd never seen one with sharks on it.
Longlining is a method of fishing where you will have miles of fishing line set out that'll have hooks spaced out upon it. And, you know, when I was in college, I did a couple tours working on a longline boat for fishing for swordfish. And so I knew what longline is, but this wasn't... You know, when I was fishing, it was a very legitimate-looking setup. It wasn't like...
This was not like your regular long line setup. This had like little pink and purple weights from Walmart attached to it and to hold the line down and had this little, you know, faded buoy on the end of it. It was not like a legitimate looking setup. When I, you know, when I long lined, I was a buoy man. So I set the buoys out for the thing and we would have,
you know, a massive buoy on the end of the line with our boat name, permit number, and everything on it. And then it had a large mast with a radar reflective dome thing on the top so that other boats would recognize it and stay away from it. And this didn't have any of that. This looked like something very illegal and subversive going on. And we felt like, you know, if we didn't act...
yeah, these sharks would definitely die.
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Chapter 3: What unusual discovery did John and Tanner make while shark diving?
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The day after John Moore and Tanner Mansell found the long line, John noticed that he had missed a call from Florida Fish and Wildlife.
So I called them and now the guy was like very, like the tone had changed so dramatically on the phone. And the guy now was like super aggro sounding on the phone. He's like, I need you to come down to the marina right now and I wanna talk to you. And I was like, hey, I'm gonna talk to a lawyer because I knew something was up and I did not go down and meet him.
And I said, you can talk to my lawyer.
And then, John found out that the rumors he'd been hearing online were true. The long line had actually been legal. Someone had a permit for it.
And it was permitted through NOAA, through the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration.
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Chapter 4: How did John and Tanner respond to finding the fishing line?
A NOAA officer who filed a report on the incident also testified and said that the report didn't include anything about John being told to stop. The trial lasted nearly three days.
And then the deliberation lasted an eternity. It was like two and a half days of the jury sending notes to us.
One note from the jury to the judge read, quote, not unanimous, cannot get there. The jury asked for more specific definitions of certain words, like mistake. Near the end of the first full day of deliberations, the judge said the jury was, quote, still very divided.
The next day, the judge issued something called an Allen charge, which urges the jury to work harder to reach a verdict to avoid a hung jury. It's also sometimes called a dynamite charge.
So after our three days, basically, of jury deliberation and deadlock jury, they said the jury has come to a decision. And honestly, we all felt really good about it. And the prosecution looked stressed. And so when the jury came out... You could immediately see on their face that it was bad. People were avoiding eye contact as they came out. Some of the jurors were crying.
And that's when I knew. I was like, oh, yeah, they're going to find us guilty.
And the whole courtroom, everyone behind... Us started crying in our side of the courtroom. And I was just, honestly, I was pissed. I was in shock and I was just, man, I was pissed.
We'll be right back. The U.S. Department of Justice issued a press release announcing John Moore and Tanner Mansell's conviction. It began, quote, a boat crew offering tourists the opportunity to swim with sharks took a pause between dives to steal a commercial fishing gear set. What was your sentence?
The prosecutor was trying to get us to go to jail for five years and pay $250,000.
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