THE WISDOM OF REGULATING THOSE "OTHER" SPECIES

We’re getting to that awful point in the year when the stock of fish in the freezer starts to dwindle, and the survivors of last year’s catch are getting lost beneath the packs of frozen beans and onion rings.

The last of the black sea bass graced our table on Christmas Eve; all that was left after that was kingfish, a pack of blowfish tails, and some lake trout fillets from a Finger Lakes trip in September.  Once those are gone--and the last kingfish will be eaten today--unless I manage to make my way upstate for an ice fishing trip, we probably won’t be able to have fish for dinner until spring, probably sometime in May.

So in a year when the fluke fishing was again disappointing, and even small bluefish were scarce, it was nice to have the kingfish and blowfish (more properly, “northern puffer”) around to put away for the winter.

I suspect that the party boats and tackle shops liked having the kingfish and blowfish around, too, because they gave people something to fish for when the wind didn’t let boats out of the inlet and there wasn’t too much else to fish for inside the bays.  Small, good-eating species such as kingfish and blowfish are also perfect “family fish,” easy enough to catch that children can enjoy them, easy to clean and cook, and very good-tasting.

That being the case, it’s a little surprising that regulators haven’t done more to stabilize populations of these “other” fish, the low-profile species that aren’t on the radar of federal fisheries managers or the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, but nonetheless provide anglers with some fun on the water, and some quality food when they come home.

I remember catching blowfish when I was very young, back in the early 1960s.  I lived in Connecticut then, and fished in Long Island Sound.  It didn’t matter whether you were fishing over mud, for flounders and eels, or fishing over rocks for blackfish (“tautog”); from late spring through early fall, so long as your hooks were small enough to fit into their mouths, you caught blowfish, and you caught a lot of them.

But by the time the ‘60s were done, blowfish largely disappeared from those waters.  Every now and again someone caught one, but they never appeared in abundance.  In the early 1980s, my wife and I moved to the South Shore of Long Island, and caught  few blowfish, but the fishing was undependable.  One year they would show in abundance, the next year, they were gone.

In 2019, the blowfishing was very good, perhaps the best it’s been since we lived on Long Island, with the fish both abundant and—at least for blowfish—large.

I have no idea why the blowfish disappeared from Connecticut waters more than a half-century ago, but it’s not hard to believe that our Long Island blowfish suffer from pulse overfishing, which is what happens when fishermen—almost always, but not necessarily, commercial fishermen—overfish an abundant stock, cause it to become overfished, and then move on to another, more abundant species, allowing the overfished stock to recover, at which point the cycle of overfishing begins again.

Because there are no regulations on either the recreational or the commercial blowfish fishery, periods of abundance become times of excess.  Many anglers fill buckets with blowfish of all sizes, returning none to the water and giving no thought to how everyone’s harvest will impact the stock.  I recall a time back in the ‘80s when blowfish tried to come back for a year or two, and seeing one angler with a pail filled with fish he must have caught in a net, because they were far too small to take a baited hook; blown up, they might have looked like a bucket of ping pong balls. But the guy took offense when asked why he killed so many small fish, indignantly answering “They’re good in the sauce!”

And yes, a year or two later, the fish disappeared once again.

Of course, that sort of recreational fishing still doesn’t make the kind of mark that unfettered commercial fishing can cause. 

Blowfish are easily caught in simple fish pots, and are a frequent bycatch in crab pots as well.  They’re one of the few fish that a traditional bayman, fishing simple gear from a small boat, still can catch easily.  And because, according to NOAA Fisheries, they command an ex vessel price of about $1.50 per pound here in New York, they’re a profitable fish to catch.  Thus, when blowfish become abundant, they’re quickly targeted by many in the small-boat commercial fleet.

That can quickly create a problem when too much gear targets what is still a relatively small number of fish.

Northern kingfish are a small fish not too distantly related to weakfish.  They average less than a pound in weight, and never grow much over three.  They're rarely seen in fish markets or restaurants, and face little commercial fishing pressure, but are a traditional summer target of daytime surfcasters, who have little to fish for during the warm months, when striped bass and bluefish become scarce.  

  

kingfish used to be a reliable fixture in the summer surf, where they eagerly ate sand fleas, or pieces of bloodworms or clam, that anglers cast somewhere between the wash and the first bar.  But they, too, grew scarce, only to stage something of a comeback in the past few years, when both surfcasters and boaters inside the bay began catching them in decent numbers.

Yet, once again, kingfish landings are completely unregulated, and there is the chance that too much attention could drive their numbers back down again.

Both blowfish and kingfish are data-poor species.  Even if regulators wanted to put measures in place to avoid overfishing, they wouldn’t have the basic information needed to put science-based rules in place.  And historically, regulators have been reluctant to adopt precautionary measures that are intended to avoid overexploitation, but aren’t based on verifiable data.  Thus, species such as blowfish and kingfish exist in a sort of netherworld where they are subject to harvest, but not to prudent management.

The good news is that’s slowly changing, at least here in New York.  The Department of Environmental Conservation’s Marine Division is beginning to investigate blowfish, in an attempt to develop some basic data, such as age at maturity, which will help them determine if and how to regulate landings.  The DEC has agreed to provide some preliminary feedback to New York’s Marine Resources Advisory Council at some point this spring.  

While it’s not clear what, if any, regulations will result, the fact that work is being done is still a hopeful sign.

Because, although you might not believe it after reading the various angling publications, both off- and on-line, fisheries management is not just about cod, striped bass, red snapper and sea bass, even though those species get most of the press.  Every coast has its blowfish, its cunner, its sand trout or surf perch, which don’t get a lot of media or regulatory attention, but support local fisheries that, in turn, are important to many fishermen and fishing related businesses.

Those “other” fish, and the fisheries that they support, deserve a bit more respect than they’re historically gotten.

It's the "other" fish that keep fishermen fishing when the striped bass, the cobia and the salmon are scarce. It's the "other" fish that can still introduce a new generation to angling, now that traditional "kids's fish" such as winter flounder are gone.  And it's the "other fish" that will provide a few meals when fluke are scarce, and legal-sized sea bass and scup are all out in deep water, and not in the bays.

Regulators only have so much time and money that they can spend, and given the burdens being placed on them by the federal and interstate management systems, as well as the compelling needs of their own states, it's easy for the lower-profile species to fall through the cracks.  But managers have a duty to maintain the a healthy and intact ecosystem, which is made up not only of the popular species, but also includes  many other stocks that rarely come into the spotlight.

Thus, they ought to turn just a bit of attention to the "other" fish stocks which, if healthy, can divert some pressure from stressed populations, and perhaps better assure that the whole will thrive.