1 Sheila Rothstein
From:Walter Cerny
Sent:Tuesday, September 15, 2026 8:15 AM
To:City Council
Subject:Hanging sharks off pier comment for City Council Today. Request my comments to be placed into the record
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Dear Mayor & City Council Members,
I’m writing you as surfer, engineer and surf contest director that you please vote to create an ordinance that bans hanging (chumming in my opinion) /bleeding out sharks off of the pier. I’d first like to state I understand fishing for threshers is indeed legal & don’t have an issue with that, but find the process of hanging them off the pier to be a water safety issue and liability for the city/state. Here are some valid reasons that would help the City’s side to do this:
1) As a surfer I feel that it is a water safety and liability issue for the city if anyone is ever bitten by another shark or animal being lured into to eat the hanging sharks. I’ve emailed several cities down south and they have never seen this done. One even stated he’s been with his city for 30 years and never seen this. Doing this questionable practice while surfers or even junior guards are swimming near by seems both unethical and against common sense. Also I have been here in Pismo since 83’ and surfing up & down the coast since then and have never seen sharks hung this way.
2) As an engineer I know that code requires that the railing and rail posts are required to meet a minimum code load of people leaning on them to ensure they will not break away allowing people to fall in and drown. Lot of deck failures over the last few years has really brought this to light. Now these fisherman are adding several hundred pounds to these rails and posts. Which in addition to a few people leaning on them could lead to a catastrophic event that could cause the railing to break and people that don’t know how to swim to fall into the ocean. 3) Lastly as a contest director we had to obtain a permit, purchase insurance, pay the lifeguards and will have a lot of kids under 17 years old down to 6 years old in the water. We have kindly asked the city in the least to disallow hanging of the sharks from the pier the weekend of our event because if anything were to happen the city/state has been warned of the dangers of this issue and could face serious liability issues. On top we have to ask to hang banners on the pier railings and we know once our event is over we have to remove our banners from the railings.
We aren’t allowed to leave them up. I really doubt I would be allowed to walk out on the pier and hang something any day of the week or even if I wanted to keep my drinks cool I couldn’t hang them off the pier to do so as the fishermen claim. On that point the water is currently 60+ degrees so the claim that they are keeping their catch cold is a farce. They’d be far better buying coolers and ice to put them in.
Thanks for your time,
Walter Cerny, Director
Still Frothy Surf Festival
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3 Sent from my iPhone