Mark The Shark - The Darth Vader Of Sport Fishing - #0100

I have followed Mark Quartiano who is better known as Mark The Shark for a couple of years. To say that Mark is controversial is an understatement. Mark seems to relish the role as the bad boy of Sportfishing and referred to himself as the Darth Vader of Sportfishing. This was interesting to me because he also seems to have a lot of kind of contrary opinions and actions to being the badboy. For example, Mark has no problem killing big sharks and posting the pictures on Instagram, however after talking to him for a while I also learned that he has tagged more sharks than anyone in the world. He doesn't just kill sharks for no reason, they are sent to biologists or he takes them to the homeless shelter. 

I wanted to learn more about what made him tick so I took a chance and sent him a message. To my surprise, he responded right away and we set up the podcast even though he didn't know what a podcast was. When I met him at his iconic office in Miami it was literally jammed with shark jaws, pictures stacked 2 feet high of previous catches were all over his desk. There was so much stuff in his office that it was impossible to take it all in. 

Mark sat down and talked about anything I wanted to talk about and by the end of the conversation I knew way more about Mark the Shark than before. I understood where he was coming from and I understood his motivations for what he does. We discussed sharks, of course, tournaments, water quality and family as well as many other subjects. We may disagree on a few things but we also agree on probably way more than we disagree. In fact, at the end of the conversation I really liked Mark and respected his work ethic that has him working 450 trips a year…every year.

There is no doubt that this will be the most controversial podcast I have ever done, but I am very happy that I get a chance to talk to Mark and was very impressed with his willingness to do this interview and answer any questions I had.

This podcast is brought to you by Waypoint. Produced by Tom Rowland and Brock Rustand. Audio editing by Brock Rustand. If you have any questions, email podcast@saltwaterexperienece.com

See you on the water,

Tom Rowland