CATCH-AND-RELEASE IN THE 21ST CENTURY

Anglers have long recognized the virtue of releasing some or all of their catch.  In 1939, the late Lee Wulff, a noted writer, angler, and conservationist, observed that

“The fish you release is a gift to another angler and remember, it may have been someone’s similar gift to you.”

I was reminded of that yesterday, when a bulky brown envelope appeared in my mail.  I knew what it was without even looking at the return address:  A message from the National Marine Fisheries Service’s Cooperative Shark Tagging Program, notifying me that one of the sharks that I released had been recaptured.

I had just tagged some shortfin mako and sandbar sharks a couple of weeks earlier, and assumed that one of them had probably been quickly recaught.  But when I opened the package, it turned out that my gift to another offshore angler had been far nicer than I had originally thought.  A mako that I had tagged exactly four years ago, on August 15, 2017, when it weighed 50 pounds or so and was only a little over four feet long (fork length), was recaptured last June, when it had quadrupled in weight and reached an overall length of more than seven feet.

Although the other angler estimated the fish’s weight at 250 pounds, that was probably a little high—a seven-foot mako should typically weigh around 200—the length estimate was roughly what one would expect for a fish that was a little over 4 feet long when released, and was then at large for nearly 4 years.

I can only hope that the fact that both length and weight were estimated means that the angler did not kill the shark, but instead regifted it to another fisherman somewhere down the line.

More and more recreational shark fishermen are doing so, in part because the tournament craze and the desire to hang big fish on a scale has cooled down from its frenzied peak in the late 1900s, and in part, at least in the case of shortfin makos, because the fish’s steadily declining abundance has led to increasingly restrictive size limits.  

I haven’t killed a shark in over 20 years, and haven’t killed a mako since the late 1990s, but even if I had wanted to bring a fish home on that day in 2017, the 52-incher that I released four years ago didn’t quite measure up to the minimum size.

And by the time it was caught again last June, the minimum size for female makos had been increased to 83 inches; since the fish was estimated to measure 87 inches overall length when recaptured, its fork length probably again fell an inch or two short of the minimum size.

Thus, I hope that it’s still swimming around out there somewhere, so it can mature and, hopefully, help rebuild the stock, so that another angler might, perhaps, encounter it, and so that it can contribute to our knowledge of the species, thanks to an acoustic tag that was implanted by Stony Brook University researchers before it was released four years ago.

Many benefits accrue from catch and release fisheries.  Unfortunately, catch and release, at least in salt water, is increasingly coming under attack, in part because its popularity is seen as a threat to traditional catch-and-kill fishing, and in part because some anglers who appear to embrace catch-and-release angling do so in a thoughtless manner that causes many fish to die after they’re returned to the water.

The notion that catch-and-release anglers somehow cause harm to catch-and-kill fishermen has become a particularly prominent issue in the striped bass fishery, after the most recent benchmark stock assessment determined that 48% of all striped bass fishing mortality in 2017, the assessment’s terminal year, was attributable to recreational release mortality.

Since that assessment was released, we saw members of the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s Atlantic Striped Bass Management Board call recreational release mortality

“the single most important issue [facing striped bass managers] at this time,”

and opinine that

“addressing [that issue] (or reducing discards) is the most important action that can be taken going forward.”

A report issued by one striped bass work group convened by the Management Board noted that

“Many [work group] members pointed to the fact that recreational discards accounted for just under 50% of the fishing mortality as basis for the critical need to address this issue.  Others noted that, particularly in states with primarily catch and release fisheries, the [Management] Board is running out of ways to control removals in the fishery.”

That last comment strays quite far from the truth. as recreational striped bass landings remain robust, accounting for 42% of striped bass mortality in 2017.  Fishery managers still have the option of placing greater restrictions on such landings in order to offset whatever release mortality occurs.  In states which host “primarily catch and release fisheries,” such restrictions would seem to be a logical way to control removals, and very much in line with what has been done in other marine catch-and-release sport fisheries, including Florida tarpon, Florida snook, and Atlantic billfish, among others.

A chart provided to the Management Board at its August meeting illustrated the fact that high levels of catch-and-release are nothing new in the striped bass fishery.  Since the late 1980s, anglers have, on average, released about 90% of their catch.  Even though only 9% of those fish are expected to die after release, 9% of millions of bass turns out to be a very large number.  Yet high release rates, and the related release mortality, has been a characteristic of the fishery for a very long time.

Still, some members of the Management Board, mainly those who lived most of their lives in the past century rather than this one, and are still trying to cling to the management paradigms of their younger years, view catch-and-kill as the highest and best use of striped bass.  Perhaps the most strident of those is Tom Fote, the Governor’s Appointee from New Jersey, who raged at the May Management Board meeting that

“We can’t bury our heads in the sand over this issue.  We need to look at, how do we basically stop those huge numbers of fish being killed, which denies the public fish to take home to eat, because we’re catch and releasing them, and killing so many fish…”

Two months earlier, at another Management Board meeting called to address new regulations requiring the use of circle hooks when fishing for striped bass with bait, Fote opposed a requirement that anglers who catch striped bass on bait while using traditional J-hooks release such fish.  The proposed release requirement was meant to discourage anglers from trying to circumvent the circle hook rules by catching striped bass while supposedly targeting other species, but Fote would have none of that, saying

“I’ve got the Governor’s Surf Fishing Tournament coming up on May 23^rd.  Summer flounder season will be open at that time from the surf also.  I help people fishing in [sic] squid to catch summer flounder, particularly if they want to eat it.

“If they accidentally catch a striped bass, of the probably 600 kids that I have fishing, because it’s a family tournament.  I will have to make them release the fish, and I don’t want to really do that…a lot of kids catch their first striped bass as an incidental catch.”

It was a strange sort of argument.  After all, a lot of kids’ first striped bass are under the minimum size limit, but Fote hopefully wouldn’t argue that kids shouldn’t have to release short stripers.  Deputy Chief Kurt Blanchard, representing the ASMFC’s Law Enforcement Committee, made the perfect riposte to Fote's comment, saying

“There is no way that we would have the ability to enforce incidental take at that point…

“To allow for that one-time effort that we may have an incidental catch, [is] to throw everything else out the window…

“The other discussion about first time takes and things like that.  I really think that this is, I spoke to this on the [Law Enforcement] Committee.  I really think that this is our opportunity to talk to young folks, and others that may be new to the fisheries, to talk about what conservation means, and take the opportunity to highlight why you’re returning that fish, caught incidentally, back to the resource, and what the means for the future of the stock.  [emphasis added]”

It was an eloquent statement that did nothing to change Fote’s mind; educating children, and older folks, about conservation seemed, to him, a frivolous effort compared with the serious business of killing striped bass.  Thus, just a few minutes later, he tried a different tack, attempting to don the mantle of advocate for the tackle shops, saying

“one of the things that concerns me, where we didn’t put this in the Amendment [sic], a lot of people supported the circle hook thinking it wasn’t going to eliminate incidental catch.  I think of tackle store owners that basically cater to the surf fishermen, basically went ahead and started stocking circle hooks.

“But they also continued buying the mullet rigs.  Unless you’re a surf fisherman, you don’t know what I’m talking about.  A mullet rig is basically what you fish mullet [as bait] with.  It’s a split hook, you know it’s a two-prong hook that you put the mullet through, and you put this two-hook on.  You catch bluefish, you catch kingfish, you catch whatever is in the surf, but it does catch striped bass.

“You basically want to keep a fish, and it might be bluefish, striped bass.  It does away with the mullet rigs.  This is a big expense for tackle stores, because they basically stock up mullets for probably a year, so they have it in the spring, because they catch it in the fall.  Now they have the hooks all set, means thousands of them in each tackle store, and they are basically going to stop selling those rigs.”

It was a stretch, even for Fote, who apparently couldn’t conceive of someone fishing mullet--on a mullet rig--for bluefish and kingfish, and maybe for summer flounder and weakfish as well, and just releasing any striped bass that they caught.  But he managed to deliver his lines with a straight face, although they weren’t particularly convincing; only New Jersey voted to oppose the mandatory release of striped bass caught on J-hooks, although the North Carolina delegation couldn’t reach a decision and cast a null vote.

That doesn’t mean that other Management Board members don’t remain very concerned about release mortality, and the unfortunate truth is that some striped bass anglers are handing them ammunition to support their efforts to restrict the catch-and-release fishery.

Sadly, many such anglers don’t realize that they are doing harm. 

More than three decades ago, a new catchphrase entered the angling lexicon.  It was “CPR,” which stands for “catch, photograph, release.”  As explained in a 1989 article in Virginia’s Morning Call,

“It’s called CPR.  Not the life-saving cardiopulmonary resuscitation but a different form of life-saving—giving a fish a chance to swim free while, at the same time, taking it home on film.

“This form of CPR—catch, photograph and release—will hopefully catch on across the country.”

CPR didn’t originate in the striped bass fishery, but it quickly took root there.  A 2014 post on the blog Delaware Surf Fishing noted that

“CPR…Catch Photo, and Release [is a] grass roots [movement] to inspire anglers to only take what you need or release what you can to promote the rebuilding of the stocks.

“…let’s face it most people just want a picture of themselves of them [sic] holding that monster fish they just caught.  Keeping that large of a fish is not always a desirable thing for many anglers.”

It’s a nice idea, and most of the anglers have good intentions, but the unfortunate truth is that cameras kill.

Big striped bass are already stressed when an angler finally brings them to the boat or the beach.  There are ways that the stress can be minimized; anglers can employ single-hooked lures and tackle stout enough to beat the fish quickly, and can refrain from fishing when high water temperature and low salinity and/or dissolved oxygen create conditions that make a released fish less likely to survive.  But even under the best of conditions, such bass will be suffering from lactic acid buildup, and will be vulnerable to bad handling practices.

Under such circumstances, the worst thing that an angler can do is grab the bass by the jaw (or, even worse, by the gill plate), hold it vertically and stand there smiling while someone looks for, eventually finds, and finally starts using a camera (although yes, we’ve all done that a time or two in our lives).  Taking a bass out of the water at all lowers its chance of survival; keeping it out of the water for an extended photo session makes survival even less likely.

Thus, we see the organization Keep Fish Wet remind us that

“The Striped Bass Fishery Is in Our Hands,”

and advise,

“Whether you fish from a center console, the beach, a rocky shoreline, a skiff, or a downtown piece of city concrete, these principles will help to make sure that your catch is released safely.

·         Minimize Air Exposure.  10 seconds or less is best.

·         Eliminate Contact with Dry Surfaces.  Wet your hands before touching fish and avoid bringing them into boats.

·         Reduce Handling Time.  Release fish quickly and only revive fish that cannot swim on their own.”

It’s all good advice and, if practiced regularly, will go a long way to both reduce release mortality and take away arguments from those who want to limit catch-and-release in order to promote catch-and-kill.

Of course, there are some recreational fisheries that are essentially irredeemable, fisheries where catch-and-release is only a screen for glaringly excessive levels of fishing mortality.  In that respect, the mid-Atlantic’s surf fishery for protected shark species is particularly heinous.

It came about innocently enough; surf fishermen along much of the coast suffer from the summer doldrums; the decline of striped bass, bluefish, and weakfish populations have made what was always a relatively slow time even worse.  Thus, it’s understandable that, when anglers learned that they could catch big sharks and rays from they beach, many began to do so.

The problem is that, especially in the upper mid-Atlantic and southern New England, just about all of the sharks that such anglers catch are either sandbar sharks, sand tigers, or dusky sharks, fish deemed “prohibited species” that must be immediately released when caught and, in some states, aren’t even legal to target.  While responsible anglers try to release such sharks without causing appreciable harm, the surf zone is a stressful place; either the anglers have to wade out to release the sharks, and risk being injured by the fish, or they must drag the shark into the wash and even onto the sand, an effort that is inevitably harmful to the shark, damaging its spinal column (if the fish is dragged by the tail), forcing the weight of the entire fish to press down upon its internal organs (remember that sharks have no supporting skeletal structure), and taking its gills up out of the water.

The sharks’ survival is far from assured.

And that’s even before we consider the Bozo Factor.

There’s something about sharks that brings out the worst in people, and makes them want to sit on their backs, bend back their spines, make stupid gestures and say stupid things while their friends take videos of the fish’s teeth.  

In one of the more outrageous recent episodes, a couple of Bubbas from West Virginia crawled out of their cave and went down to Florida, where they caught a protected sand tiger shark and proceeded to open a beer can using the living shark’s teeth.  Like most fish-abusing idiots, they quickly posted their antics on social media, trying to impress…someone.

Their excuse was that

“It was just a bit of fun.”

Such behavior doesn’t do much for the public image of anglers, and does even less for the health of the fish.

It also provides those who would restrict catch-and-release angling, in order to promote catch-and-kill, ready-made arguments that help them make their point.

If sportfishing is to survive well into the 21^st Century, as human populations increase, the climate shifts, and fish populations come under more stress, catch-and-release angling is going to have to play an ever-larger role.

But if catch-and-release angling is going to remain a viable option in the public’s eye, anglers are going to have to take responsibility to assure that it’s done right, minimizing the stress on the fish, maximizing the chances of released fish’s survival, while also maximizing the likelihood that angling, itself, will survive.

As Gifford Pinchot, first head of the U.S. Forest Service, observed more than eighty years ago,

“We love the search for fish and the finding, the tense eagerness before the strike and the tenser excitement afterward; the long hard fight, searching the heart, testing the body and soul; and the supreme moment when the glorious creature, fresh risen from the depths of the sea, floats to your hand and then, the hook removed, sinks with a gently motion back from whence it came, to live and fight another day.”

Intentionally killing a fish is a poor anticlimax to such an experience; unintentionally killing, when such killing could be avoided, is both a tragedy and a disgrace.