The owner, captain, and crew of the fishing vessel Sensation, who lost out on over $3 million in tournament prize money when the 619.4-pound blue marlin they caught on Saturday was disqualified, has hired a law firm to protest the decision.
They have hired the Wheatly Law Group to represent them in their efforts and are on a "quest" to overturn the disqualification, attorney Stevenson L. Weeks told CNN. A protest of the results on behalf of the vessel was filed with the tournament by 11 a.m. on Sunday, he said.
"The tournament rules require this dispute be mediated and if it does not resolve in mediation, it will be submitted to arbitration pursuant to the North Carolina Revised Uniform Arbitration Act," he said, referring to the dispute resolution section of the tournament's official rules.
The effort comes after the vessel caught the massive marlin after a six-hour fight as part of the Big Rock Blue Marlin Tournament, a weeklong fishing tournament based in Morehead City, North Carolina.
The massive marlin was caught in the last hours of the last day of the tournament, and the crew of the Sensation returned to dock Saturday night amid throngs of people cheering what they expected to be a championship fish.
Photos of the marlin show it had a significant chunk missing on its underside and near its tail. The tournament consulted with its rules and experts and ultimately disqualified the marlin due to "mutilation" caused by a shark or other marine animal, according to a statement.
"This decision is consistent with prior decisions made by the tournament in similar circumstances over the last 65 years," the tournament added.
Sensation would have won $3.5 million for the catch, including over $700,000 for the first boat to catch a marlin weighing over 500 pounds. Instead, the crew of Sushi, which brought in a 484.5-pound blue marlin, won first place in the tournament -- as well as prize money totaling $2,769,438.
Sensation Capt. Greg McCoy believes his vessel won the tournament fair and square, he told CNN on Tuesday.
"We worked hard, we felt like what we did was incredible with this fish, we knew we had won the tournament," he said. "I knew that fish was gonna destroy the other fish on the leaderboard weight-wise, and that's exactly what it did. We followed all the rules. There was nothing nefarious or cheating or anything like that on our part."
"We feel like it was taken away from us," he added.
He said he believed the tournament was arbitrarily applying the rules differently from year to year.
"The tournament is about catching the biggest fish. We caught the biggest fish. I'm not a sour grapes person. I'm not a sore loser. We won the tournament. We caught the biggest fish," he said. "As they say, put that in your pipe and smoke it."
