A few nights ago, my wife and I were having dinner with a couple we hadn’t seen since before the COVID pandemic blew up early last year. I had known the other guy for quite a few years—from back in ’95 when a bunch of us tried to convince New York State not to liberalize its striped bass regulations too much or too soon. He was a passionate and very capable surfcaster back then, and over the years has caught three or four over 50 from the beach, one of which might—probably would— have broken the 60-pound mark if it had been killed and put on a good scale instead of released.
He doesn’t fish the surf quite as aggressively now as he did
in those years, but he still spends some time on the beach, and as we talked,
he began talking about something he saw that bothered him quite a bit.
He had been fishing a Long Island inlet, and released a
couple of bass, when quitting time came along.
As he was headed off the beach, something in the wash caught his eye. It turned out to be a dead bass in
the 40-pound range that hadn’t been dead for long. He described it as “fresh as a daisy.”
It’s impossible to know how that fish died. Fresh in the wash, it’s likely that it was
caught and released by a surfcaster, although the possibility that it was
caught in a boat, and died sometime after release can’t be
discounted. Maybe someone ignored the circle
hook rules, and gut-hooked it on a chunk of bait, or engaged in some illegal
snag-and-drop.
But if I had to bet, whether the fish was caught from beach
or boat, I’d put my money on a camera being the instrument of that striper’s
demise.
Because cameras kill.
It’s impossible to say how much it happens during the year,
but the incidents aren’t rare: Someone
hooks a nice bass, and after an extended fight—just how extended depending on
the gear used—the fish finally comes to hand, tired, its gills pulsing as it
tries to drive oxygen into its blood. At
that point, it’s dragged out of the water, and…
“Hey, get the camera, I want a picture of this one…”
“Where is it?”
“It’s over there in the bag…Just use your phone…”
“OK, wait…I’ve got it over here, where it won’t get wet…
“Hold it up…OK…Got it…But that might not be good, better take
another one…Hold your arms out some more…”
All the time, the bass’ gills are still working, futilely
striving to draw wisps of oxygen out of the air.
“Maybe I ought to wash the sand [or blood, or whatever else]
off, and take another one…”
“Got it…That’s good…You can let it go.”
“It’s not swimming too good.”
“Just move it around in the water to get some in its gills…Yeah,
that’s pretty good.”
And then, as the released fish wobbles into the sea, moving slowly and not always upright,
“It’s swimming away…Yeah, it should live.”
And maybe it will, but the odds are pretty good that it won’t,
and that at some point over the next couple of minutes, couple of hours, or
couple of days, the “successfully released” bass will succumb to delayed mortality,
and end up feeding the crabs and the gulls.
The obsession with photographing just about every decent-sized bass before release is something that I’ve
never understood. For a novice angler,
OK, he or she is excited, and wants to record the moment when a big fish is
finally at hand. But after spending some
time and catching some fish, what’s the point of the photograph? After all, the angler knows what they caught; they have
the memories, and hopefully have grown enough confidence as a fisherman that they don’t need
to seek others’ approval.
Taking pictures of a fish—bass or any other—that are killed
and taken home is one thing, but risking the death of a fish that is later released, just to take a photo, is unacceptable behavior.
“Ideally, keep the fish in the water to reduce stress and the
potential for injury. [emphasis added]”
“If a fish must be removed from the water, handle it as
little as possible, and release it quickly.”
“If you need to lift a striped bass, hold it horizontally by
gripping the lower jaw and supporting its weight under the belly.”
“Avoid touching the eyes and gills.”
None of those are compatible with the typical striped bass photo.
In just about all of them, the fish is out of the
water. The very act of taking the photo keeps
the fish out of the water longer than it would be if merely unhooked and released. While
some show anglers holding bass horizontally, as they should, far too many show
the fish in the traditional pose, hanging from the angler’s hand on its jaw or,
far worse, shoved into its gills.
Yet, particularly in this age of social media show-and-tell,
an unfortunately large number of anglers feel the need to demonstrate their
prowess by posting photos of fish handled in just that fashion, without knowing
and/or without caring that their actions are killing fish.
It's not unusual for photos posted by charter boats to show
multiple above-the-slot-limit bass being held by multiple anglers at the same
time. It’s highly unlikely that all of
those fish came aboard at exactly the same time; more likely, after a multiple
hookup, the first fish landed was left on the deck until the last one came
aboard, the pictures were taken, and the fish returned to the water, where some
do and many don’t survive.
But a few dead bass are a price that many are willing to pay
to promote their charter businesses.
Such irresponsible fish handling, born out of an obsession
for photographs, is largely the fault of the angler, but regulators need to
accept some responsibility, too.
While Amendment VI accounts for the release mortality of out-of-slot
fish, such release mortality is calculated at the
generally accepted 9% rate, which has been largely validated in studies
conducted by at least three different states.
However, in those state studies, while striped bass were hooked, landed,
and released by researchers who handled fish in approximately the same manner
that anglers would, in none of them were the larger bass held out of the water
for extended periods, in various positions, while the researcher posed for
photos.
There is little doubt that, if such photo sessions were
added to the next release mortality study, the mortality rate would go up. That’s something that wasn’t considered when
Addendum VI was adopted.
The ASMFC had a chance to correct that omission while preparing
the initial draft of the pending Amendment 7 to the Interstate Fishery Management
Plan for Atlantic Striped Bass.
Unfortunately, the Plan Development Team decided not to include an
option that would have required larger bass to be released without removing
them from the water.
In omitting that option, the Plan Development Team reasoned that people
would need to measure fish to determine whether they fell into the slot, or were
too large and must be released, and such measuring would require the fish to be
taken out of the water. The problem was
that the PDT wasn’t creative enough in its thinking; it would have been a simple matter to
require all bass over, say, 40 or 42 inches to be released in the water, while
allowing smaller fish to be measured in a boat or on land. A 5- or a 7-inch gap between the top end of
the slot and the minimum size for in-water release would have left plenty of
margin for error, while still requiring the biggest—and most likely to be
photographed—fish to be kept wet throughout the release process.
The PDT was also concerned that in-water release would increase
the chance that anglers would be injured while letting bass go, but that’s likely
an overwrought fear. After all, the
National Marine Fisheries Service already requires the in-water release of recreationally-caught
tuna, sharks, and billfish, and such fish are certainly larger, more
difficult to handle, and caught in far rougher seas than a big, but toothless
and docile, striped bass.
Thus, the responsibility falls solely on anglers to do
the right thing.
And in the case of the already overfished striped bass, the
right thing means handling every fish in a way that maximizes its survival and
its future contribution to the spawning stock.
That means saying no to cameras, unless used to
photograph the fish in the water during the course of a speedy
release.
For if used any other way, cameras will just keep
on killing the very big female bass that we can least afford to lose.
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