How AI Could Pose a Threat in the Outdoors

THE EMERGENCE OF ARTIFIcial intelligence holds great promise to both improve outdoor recreation and to disrupt it with equal e cacy.

Essentially, AI is ramped-up VR, virtual reality, that erases the critically important line between what’s real and what’s not.

In our day-to-day lives, AI already is being used for less than noble purposes. Parents are receiving calls believed to be from their children in which a voice identical to that of their child says he or she is in trouble and needs money sent immediately. Banks are being scammed by arti cial voices, cloned to sound like yours or mine, instructing the bank to move huge sums of money to places where it can never be recovered.

Equally wrong-minded people also, certainly, are cooking up schemes in which AI could be used to threaten outdoor recreation. And unless countermeasures are developed rst, here are a few ways that could happen.

In tournament shing, some events have taken to using photographs or video as ocial veri cation of catches. Fish are weighed or measured on camera then promptly released, and that’s an idea I wholeheartedly embrace. No long trips in livewells, no release into unfamiliar water. And it’s all based on the notion that pictures don’t lie. And they didn’t, until now.

If someone has the sophistication and so ware onboard to do so, that someone could create an image or video of themselves catching and weighing just about any size sh of any species necessary to win a tournament by an ounce or a pound or an inch or a foot. And the technology to do so already is crisp enough to produce images virtually undetectable indistinguishable from actual photos or videos.

at is real. at already is possible.

On the arti cial-voice scene, imagine a tournament director ge ing a call from your best friend to say that you – his best friend – is cheating in tournaments. Only it wasn’t your friend who made the call. It was a rival who happened to grab a voice sample and used AI to put fake words into your friend’s mouth. e blurring of the line between real and unreal in the outdoors isn’t new. It started long ago, when people would cut photographs of big deer or big sh out of magazines and place them in advertisements for their own businesses. e question then was whether the deer on a particular ranch really were that big or the photo came from somewhere else. At least, though, we all could safely presume that the photograph, wherever taken, was of a real animal. e only reason his mother didn’t take the bait was that she knew Adam was asleep upstairs, in the same house.

Selling points are important to folks who sell things, too, so it’s not surprising that some sellers would try to make their product look be er than it actually does. For reference, watch most any fast-food restaurant commercial on television.

I mentioned AI on my radio show on the nal Saturday of April and learned during the next break that my own producer, Adam Snydar, had experienced AI fraud.

He’s young and still lives with his parents. And one night, someone using AI to clone his voice called and told his mother that he’d been wrongly arrested and needed several hundred dollars sent right away to avoid being jailed.

To put this in a criminally pro table outdoors perspective, imagine ge ing a call from your best beachfront-wading friend late on a Saturday a ernoon.

“Hey, man, I got my truck stuck on the

:: by DOUG PIKE TF&G Senior Contributing Editor

beach, and this wrecker driver isn’t going to pull me out unless I can get somebody to send him a hundred bucks pronto. He won’t take my credit card. Can you help me out? Phone’s about to die. Use that payment app we use and send the money to Joe’s Towand-Go. anks, Bro.” ere are good minds in this world who will nd ways to bene t mankind through the possibilities and potential of AI. But for each of them, there’s also an opportunistic, predatory criminal who will search out ways to exploit AI for personal gain. e one thing AI can never replace is the opportunity each of us has to share outdoor experiences with friends and family members. Not on a screen, but in front of our eyes. Under our noses. Across our lips. On our ngertips. ose interactions, at least for now, are irreplaceable. And if there comes a time when our own senses can be replaced or in any way substituted, the best I can hope is that we be treated to the sight of sunrises, the smell of trout slicks and the feeling of warm sunlight on a cold neck in a deer blind.

Would you send the money? I’d call rst, but if I got any reply other than a live answer, I’d be really tempted to send that $100, even if that meant me losing the money to a crook. Be er than leaving a friend stranded, right? And then again potentially so wrong.

Editor’s Note: In case you blew past it, the Inside Fish & Game column also addresses arti cial intelligence, on page 4 of this issue.

HARK POPULATIONS ARE ON THE RISE. Although many species like the oceanic whitetip for example are far from recovery, many of the species more commonly associated with the Texas coastline have come back.

Overharvest, especially from commercial longliners had put a hurt on sharks, but more conservative regulations activated three decades ago, have helped.

“ ere has de nitely been a rise in blacktip, spinner and bull shark populations along with some other species,” said Dr. Greg Stunz with the Harte Institute in Corpus Christi.

You might have seen Dr. Stunz on a variety of “Shark Week” programming as he has worked all over to conserve the oceans and keep populations of its apex predator healthy.

When asked if growing human populations along the coast combined with increased shark numbers was a recipe for more a acks, Stunz said shark a acks are still very rare.

“You have a very small chance of being bi en by a shark. You need of course to remain cautious in waters where sharks dwell and keep an eye out for certain things, but we shouldn’t have an overbearing fear of shark a acks,” he said.

Practical Tips

e rst thing to keep an eye out for is the sharks themselves. If you see large sharks on a beach or while wade shing in a bay, slowly head back to shore.

Marcus He in of Christian Surf Fishing Adventures was chest deep in the surf at Sea Rim State Park a few years back when a seven-foot-long hammerhead swam by.

“I looked up and I got a li le nervous, but the shark kept on swimming and minded its own business. It was beautiful to see but a li le too close for comfort,” he said.

Fishermen o en get into con icts with sharks due to stringers loaded with speckled trout, red sh, pompano, or some other surf-dwelling species. You need to keep long stringers and make sure they do not oat up to you. A shark taking a hunk out of a sh, doesn’t care if that also means striking your behind that is next to it.

e oating sh baskets work be er by the way.

A product called Sharkbanz has shown much promise in reducing shark con ict. Capt. Kyle Johnson wade shes and guides in the shark-infested Chandeleur Islands.

“We encounter a lot of sharks and constantly had sh being taken or hit on stringers. I tried Sharkbanz for a year and had zero incidents. We had some sharks come and then bolt away, as if something scared them,” he said.

e device works via the Earth’s magnetic eld and messes with a shark’s senses. It comes in two versions, a wearable and a larger one called a Zeppelin you can a ach to a sh basket.

Marcus Heflin of Christian Surf Fishing Adventures, pictured here, had a big hammerhead swim right past him while wadefishing Sea Rim State Park. Sharks aren’t usually out to get people but you need to be cautious in their domain.

If a shark does approach you, as strange as it might sound, punch it. Seriously.

Punch it as hard as you can in the nose and pray for the best. Many divers, surfers and waders have done this and lived to tell the tale.

Other things to consider are for women to stay out of the water when they are on their menstrual cycle and to avoid large baitfish schools. Big pods of pogies and mullets bring in sharks and sometimes big ones.

Texas Big Surf Sharks

Texans can potentially encounter many of the most dangerous sharks along the coast. Bull sharks, tiger sharks, lemon sharks and hammerheads are on most top 10 dangerous lists, and they are all here.

Bull sharks are the most likely of these to encounter due to their abundance in not only the Gulf but our bays. They can live in completely fresh water and for example are frequently caught near the mouth of the Neches River in Sabine Lake and around the Interstate 10 bridge on the Trinity River, north of Trinity Bay.

Their grumpy nature is well-documented, but bulls are not the most common large species on the Texas Coast.

There are two species that can weigh more than 100 pounds and are overall more common than even bulls.

If you were to ask anglers whether these species were dangerous, most would answer with a resounding “No!” since they are not in the lexicon of deadly sharks. In fact, the Discovery Channel produced a highly rated program about the top 10 most dangerous sharks and neither made the list.

Both the oceanic whitetip and shortfin mako did. However, those species rank far below both the blacktip and spinner in terms of unprovoked non-fatal attacks on humans according to the International Shark Attack File (ISAF) at the Florida Museum of Natural History.

ISAF data show blacktips are responsible for 36 unprovoked attacks.

Spinners have been responsible for 16 unprovoked attacks. For comparison, the oceanic whitetip committed 12 unprovoked nonfatal but also three fatal attacks. The shortfin mako dished out nine unprovoked nonfatal attacks and one fatal. If these species were abundant and were common on beaches there would no doubt be more attacks.

For reference bull sharks have 93 unprovoked nonfatal and a terrifying 26 fatal attacks, showing for Texas-centric sharks they are the most dangerous.

In the Discovery Channel’s defense, its list featured numerous factors, including fatalities and size. This would obviously put species like the great white above many other known attackers, but in terms of raw attack data, blacktips and spinners deserve our respect.

This is not to vilify these species which can be as acrobatic as a tarpon and put on an equal fight pound for pound. It is to make people think.

Just because a shark hasn’t killed someone doesn’t mean there isn’t a potential danger. Any shark can cause harm and we need to respect all of them, even species we often dismiss like blacktips and spinners.

Sharks are incredible, majestic creatures that have gotten more people interested in the oceans than all other things combined. We need to be good stewards of that resource, obey all size and bag limits and release those we do not wish to eat.

We also need to be cautious because sometimes sharks attack and we don’t want to end up on the negative end of any of these shark attack statistics.

Megalops atlanticus

ITH AN EPIC LATIN NAME like that, a sh needs some awesome a ributes and in the case of the tarpon, there are plenty.

e tarpon is arguably the most prized inshore/ nearshore game sh on the planet, and they happen to live on the Texas Coast with an uptick in catches in recent years.

e following are 10 tarpon truths that will increase your respect for the species and have you ready to do ba le with the “silver king” this summer.

MEGA RECORD: e Texas state record tarpon was caught in 2017 by Michael Shane LaRue II. It weighed 229 pounds and measured 90 inches. e minimum length for tarpon is 85 inches with a daily bag of one. It is essentially a catch-and-release only sh and that’s a good thing. e 85-inch limit allows for potential new record sh to be caught as it would take a sh likely even larger than that to break the current record.

TARPON MOVEMENTS: According to Texas A&M’s Texas Tarpon Tagging Initiative which is cooperating with other tarpon research, two tarpon were tagged with numbers “8616” and “8618” in October of 2018 near Galveston.

“A er a year of no detections, tarpon “8616” was detected o the coast of Corpus Christi in October of 2019 and then again o the coast of South Padre Island in November of 2019. Tarpon “8618” was also detected a year later near Matagorda Bay in October 2019 and then again o the coast of Corpus Christi in November 2019.” As you can see, tarpon like to move.

JUVENILE TARPON: Young tarpon are common residents along the Lower Coast year-round and can also be found on the Middle and Upper Coasts.

Every year anglers catch young tarpon near Lake Jackson, Matagorda and around the Galveston Bay complex. According to

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TPWD o cials, li le is known of the tarpon’s spawning activity or growth.

“Tarpon of 6 to 18 inches have been found in river mouths, lakes and bar-ditches and sometimes in polluted areas. Young tarpon o en go into the brackish water of small marsh channels, while adults may swim far up the larger rivers of South Texas, perhaps in search of food. Most commonly found o the beachfront in the Gulf.”

TARPON, TEXAS: Ever heard of Tarpon, Texas?

for it

Known as Port Aransas for the last 100 years, it was named for the main economic driver for the island city.

Beginning in the late 1880s thousands poured into the area to catch huge tarpon and for years thousands gathered to witness the annual “Tarpon Rodeo” tournament. Similar accounts are found in Port O’Connor, Freeport and Port Arthur.

OLD FISH: Tarpon are long-lived sh. According to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, the lifespan of a tarpon can be in excess of 50 years. e oldest tarpon in captivity lived to be 63 years old.

TARPON “ROLLING”: Tarpon will o en “roll” like alligator gar sh. is is because they have the ability to get air from the surface, much like a gar sh. is allows the species to live in areas with low dissolved oxygen levels, which in waterways with more stressed than ever, comes in quite handy.

SPAWNING MYSTERIES: According to o cials with the Bone sh & Tarpon Trust, spawning remains the most unknown variable of the equation, and one of the most important.

“Protection of spawning sites is vital to maintaining the tarpon shery, because without the future generations that result from spawning there would be no tarpon shery at all. We know that spawning occurs in late spring through summer, and the limited information available suggests that tarpon spawn over 100 miles o shore, where they presently receive no protections.”

TARPON VISION: According to Fish Costa Rica, tarpon have amazing color vision with ve types of cones cells in their eyes.

“ ey can see into the ultraviolet spectrum even further than birds and insects that have four types of cones cells in their eyes. In case you are wondering, humans only have three types of cone cells.”

Oh yeah and we forgot to tell you. ere are no tarpon in Costa Rica. We o en think of the Paci c side but there is also a Caribbean side to the beautiful nation that has a great tarpon shery.

TARPON WILL TAKE A FLY: Tarpon will take a y and are high on the list of everyone who y shes in saltwater.

According to Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission o cials, on May 11, 2001 Jim Holland Jr., guided by Captain Steve Kirkpatrick, caught the rst tarpon with y shing equipment over 200 pounds. It weighed 202-pounds, 8-ounces and was caught on a 20-pound tippet.

I have yet to catch one on the y and would be happy with catching a tarpon embryo, much less a monster of such proportions.

TARPON PROBLEMS: ere is much research being done on tarpon right now. Li le is known about them in comparison to species like speckled trout and red sh.

One major conservation issue that needs to be looked at is ne ing. Tarpon are caught as bycatch by pogy boats, especially in Louisiana where the bulk of that shery exists. ere are also issues on the Mexico side of the border. I have spoken with scientists doing shark surveys down there who have seen tarpon on the market alongside many other species.

No one is sure of the extent of either of these problems but they, along with water quality, development of habitat are concerns for this great species.

In my opinion, if we get tarpon conservation right in Texas, everything will bene t. ey are survivors in some ways and delicate in others and by working hard to ensure their survival, we can also secure a bright future for our other beloved sheries.