Thursday, June 14, 2018

IS IT TIME FOR A WANTON WASTE LAW?


Yesterday, someone sent me a news article about a billfish tournament down in Mississippi.  A 796-pound blue marlin won the event.  A 739 took second place.

Seeing that sort of thing, my first reaction was to envy the guy in the chair.  Some folks have the time and the money to chase billfish around the world, and some live close by good billfish waters and catch their share close to home.  I fish offshore in the northeast, where blue marlin are caught every once in a while.  Though I’ve encountered their little white cousins, so far, I’ve yet to match myself against a big blue.

I’m still hoping that day will come, but I only want it to happen if it ends with both me and the marlin surviving the event.  

Which led to my second reaction to the tournament piece.  I wondered what happened to those two big Mississippi marlin once they were taken down from the scales.

The article didn’t talk about that.

I’d like to think that the fish were cut up by the crews, maybe smoked or tossed on the grill and eaten, in time, by someone.  If the crews didn’t want them, I’m sure there are plenty of folks in that part of Florida who have fallen on pretty hard times, and that they’d appreciate any bit of fresh fish that might be donated to a local food bank or homeless shelter. 


“Fish weighed at the scales may be returned to the boat or be donated to the tournament for the purposes of research and feeding the hungry.”
That gives me hope that both of those marlin were, in the end, used as food.

But it doesn’t always happen that way.  In the past, far too often, large gamefish such as marlin, sharks tarpon and, years ago, even giant tuna were just killed, weighed and dumped back out at sea or tossed in a local landfill.  When I first started fishing offshore, 35 or 40 years ago, I recall that a garbage truck was always a fixture at offshore tournaments and club contests, to accept contestants’ entries once they came off the scales.

At some events, that still happens today.

Yes, biologists often attend the tournaments, to take various samples from the fish that are weighed in, but that’s more a matter of making the best of a bad situation than anything else.  I’ve never spoken to anyone taking such samples who wasn’t willing to say, in quiet conversation, that they’d prefer that the fish hadn’t died.

Still, as the tournament rule quoted above illustrates, things are getting a little better.  Some use is being found for the fish weighed in.  Marlin, and anything else, donated “for the purposes of research” might or might not still end up in a dumpster, but at least tournament sponsors have begun to be conscious of the need to avoid waste, if only for purposes of also avoiding bad publicity.

Hunters in this country figured that out a long time ago.  I’ve long contended that the conservation ethics of salt water fishermen lags that of hunters and fresh water anglers by 50+ years; as a group, we’re just beginning to figure out what our inland brethren learned two or three generations back.

There was a time when some hunters would kill an elk, a sheep or a deer just for the trophy and photos, and leave the meat for the coyotes and flies (dumpsters being scarce in the woods and the mountains, disposal took alternate means).  That was particularly true in what were still wilderness areas, where wealthy sportsmen from other parts of the continent, and other parts of the world, ventured out on extended hunts, where they killed vast amounts of game for nothing more than the horns and the photos.


“the most outrageous of slob hunting trips,”
noting that

“It is estimated that Gore killed more than 4,000 bison, 1,500 elk, 2,000 deer, 1,500 antelope, 500 bear and hundreds of smaller animals and birds…about half of those were killed in the Yellowstone River Valley during Gore’s 10-month stay on the Tongue River.
“There’s no telling how many animals he wounded.  By one account, he was a ‘rather indifferent’ shooter when not using a rest…
“That Gore left many animals to rot angered even his own entourage.
“…’His prairie hunting behavior proved so extreme that it offended both local native bands and many of the frontiersmen whom he had hired for the expedition.’
“Certainly the Indians in the regions where he hunted frowned upon the waste.  The Yampas reportedly told him to leave their Colorado lands.  The Crow complained to their Montana Indian agent, but it did no good.
“…given his excesses, Gore’s a perfect poster boy for today’s conservationists and sportsmen as an example of all that is wrong with slob hunting…”
In response to similar excesses that, although not as outrageous as Gore’s, still wasted vast amounts of big game that was valued by subsistence hunters and more rational sportsmen, many states, particularly in the West, adopted “wanton waste” laws which made it clear that hunters who don’t utilize the game that they killed would be punished.

In other words, if you kill it, you’d damned well better eat it, or face a substantial fine.

The laws take slightly different shapes in different places, but the gist of them is the same.  In Wyoming, the Game and Fish Department warns hunters that “wanton waste” involves

“Shooting an animal and leaving the meat to waste.  Hunters are required to immediately remove all edible portions of meat from their big game animal.  This includes all front and hind quarters and the loin meat along the spine.”


“Under Montana law, it is illegal to waste any part of a game animal that is defined as ‘suitable for food.’  For big game animals, all four quarters above the hock, including loin and backstrap, are considered suitable for food.  Wanton waste of fish or game is not only illegal, it’s unethical.
“For birds, only the breast meat has to be used on all birds that are the size of a partridge or smaller.  For upland birds larger than a partridge, including pheasants and sage grouse, the breast meat and thighs must be kept.  With large birds like turkeys, the breasts, thighs, and wings must be used…”
Maybe it’s time that we start thinking about similar laws for our salt water fish.

Start with the folks who hold Highly Migratory Species permits. 

Sure, they can weigh in their tournament marlin.  But after the photos are taken and the fish has been taken  off the scales, it’s the permit holder’s responsibility to make sure that the fish is not wasted.  The tournament can certainly make arrangements with a shelter or food bank to receive the fish, but it should be the permit holder’s responsibility, not the tournament’s, to comply.  And noncompliance should earn a big fine.

The same thing would apply to shark fishermen.  Nothing would stop them from putting that 300-pound blue shark on the scale, but they better have kept it iced it down, to prevent the urea in the shark‘s blood from breaking down and tainting the meat with ammonia.  And yes, blue sarks are edible if you handle them right.  About 20 years ago, one of my anglers put a 307-pounder on the scales—it took first in one tournament and second in another run on the same day.  We spent a lot of hours cutting up and packaging the meat, and distributing what we couldn’t use to friends, family and co-workers.  One guy I worked with put it on the grill and said that it was the only fish that his son ever actually ate.

We never would have thought of feeding that fish to a dumpster.

The same respect should be afforded at the state level, for smaller, less glamourous fish.  It’s not just those with charisma that deserve protection.



“Ray meat is difficult to cook and has a urine taste,”
but folks should think about that before they release an arrow.

Here on Long Island, and elsewhere in the upper Mid-Atlantic/southern New England region, we see too many anglers wasting fish that are actually good to eat, just because they’re not very pretty.  Go to just about any shoreline fishing spot, and you’ll find the rotting carcasses of sea robins and skates that were caught and tossed above the high-tide mark to die, because someone got upset that an unwanted species took their bait.

Many anglers don’t realize that sea robins are wonderfully edible, and skates are also becoming a more common offering in fish markets and seafood restaurants.  But even if that were not true, both fish have a role to play in the marine ecosystem, and as pioneer ecologist Aldo Leopold once wrote,

“The last word in ignorance is the man who says of an animal or plant, ‘What good is it?’  If the land mechanism as a whole is good, then every part is good, whether we understand it or not.  If the biota, in the course of aeons, has built something we like but do not understand, then who but a fool would discard seemingly useless parts?  To keep every cog and wheel is the first principle of intelligent tinkering.”
Killing any fish out of ignorance and pique, and not because someone wants it for food, is clearly wrong.

The good news is that people, including a lot of anglers, are losing their tolerance for waste.  The next logical step is to make the wanton waste of marine resources not only intolerable, but illegal as well.

Fish can be many things.  They can be food, they can be a sought-after quarry, they can be a sleek bit of beauty that adorns a tropical reef.

But they should never be considered, or treated like, garbage.

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