The Yarmouth Shark Scramble is back this summer.
The pandemic wiped out last year’s tournament, which sees around 150 fishers compete to see who can catch the largest blue shark.
Bob Gavel, one of the organizers, has been involved in the event since the beginning in 1998.
He says it wasn’t looking promising when they looked at bringing it back last March.
“As things were progressing, the third wave of COVID-19 hit. We put everything on the backburner again. It was around the first of July when we really started to try and think of how we could make this happen,” said Gavel.
Gavel says they had 15 boats with 127 participants in 2019.
“We’ve already got 15 boats. I have a feeling we’ll have 20 or more, and 150-170 participants by the time the tournament actually starts.”
Gavel says it’s a tight turnaround, but there’s been tremendous interest from fishers and the community.
It will run August 18-21 on the Yarmouth waterfront.
DFO monitors the blue sharks, which are not commercially fished, and hundreds of sharks are tagged and released each year by the participants.
Hear more with Bob Gavel this Sunday on the Y95 Weekender.
