Nine unlawful fishing counts and one false-statement count were filed against 27-year-old Connor Seifert after Washington officers accused him of illegally catching and dragging protected sixgill and sevengill sharks ashore in Pierce County.
Months of surveillance and Seifert’s own social media posts drove the case, with body-camera footage showing an officer confronting him in June and saying he knew rules barring those sharks from being fully or partly removed from the water.
WDFW said it had received 14 complaints about Seifert and rejected his claim the catches were accidental, citing videos that allegedly showed him sitting on a shark’s back, holding its mouth open and gripping it by the tail.
Puget Sound serves as a nursery for both species, and officers said exhausting pregnant sharks can kill their pups; Washington lists them as Species of Greatest Conservation Need, while sixgills are near threatened and sevengills vulnerable.