Criminal · Vox Media Podcast Network

The Longline

April 3, 2026·37 min·2 clips

John and Tanner find a suspicious longline with sharks hooked, realizing something criminal is happening offshore.

Tanner knows sharks up close. He says panic changes the energy in the water and can make a person look more like prey. Calm eye contact is his move. His first shark dive was in 2016, on vacation in Jupiter, Florida, with sharks passing within five feet and moving on. Then the longline changed everything. The day after John Moore and Tanner found it, John missed a call from Florida Fish and Wildlife. The tone had changed. John says the person on the phone sounded aggressive and wanted him at the marina right away, so he called a lawyer. Soon the online rumors were confirmed: the line they thought might reveal a crime was legal. It had a permit through NOAA, the same agency John says had sounded concerned when his coworker first called. The permit was rare. Tanner calls it the most rare permitted line in the U.S., with only up to five granted each year. At first, he felt bad. They had interfered with something lawful, even though they believed they had checked with law enforcement first. Then came weeks of silence. John and Tanner say they heard nothing more from law enforcement. The community kept talking, especially around the anti-shark feeling John says runs through some Florida fishers who believe sharks steal their catch.

As heard by us

A shark-diving discovery turns into a tense story about permits, suspicion, and Florida's hostility toward sharks.

The Longline starts with the strange calm of shark diving and then lets the trouble surface slowly. Tanner, who has spent years getting close to sharks, and John Moore find a long line off Florida and think they may have stumbled onto something illegal.

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Why you'd press play

You thought you'd found a crime. So did they. Then the permit showed up.

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