TO KILL A FISH: OF SPORTSMANSHIP AND EXPECIENCY

 

I started fishing when I was very young, catching a bergall (more properly, “cunner”) not much after my second birthday, and used the tip section of a cane pole to wreak havoc among the snapper blue population not too long after that.

Back then, as I noted in last Thursday’s post, salt water fishing was much different than it is today.  Not only were the boats and equipment much cruder than they were today, but anglers had a very different attitude toward the fish.  The sort of fishing my family did at the time—essentially, sinker-bouncing for winter flounder and anything else that happened to bite—was a very blue-collar affair, with most of the anglers hoping to bring home “free” fish to augment whatever they bought at the grocery store.

At the same time, recreational fishing was a lower-key effort than it is today.  People went out a little way from the harbor—or sometimes anchored up inside—picked a spot that looked good and dropped down their baits, hoping that they would be “lucky.”  Most of the anglers labored at physically challenging jobs during the week, as plumbers, carpenters, masons, and such—my father reupholstered furniture—and looked at their time on the water as a chance to relax, spend time with family and/or friends, maybe drink a couple of beers and forget about work for a while.

They didn’t work all that hard at catching fish.  It was a time before outboard fishing boats were rigged with electronics suites that would have been the envy of a Second World War destroyer captain, and it’s not at all clear that my father, or the anglers he knew at the time, would have used depthfinders, GPS and such even if it had been available.  I still remember my father getting annoyed with me when I was 12 or so years old, and had started trying to do things that I read about in the fishing magazines, because I was trying to be “too scientific” when I fished, and was taking all the fun out of his time on the water.

The magazines that I read were also much different than those of today (besides the obvious fact that they were all printed on paper and came in the mail, rather than being delivered electronically).  Back then, the writers told stories.  Sometimes, they were stories about far-away places.  Sometimes they talked about a new lure, or new way to fish, or just how to better apply the things and the knowledge you had.  And sometimes—and I have to admit that, even then, these were my favorite tales of all—they spoke of epic fights with fish that weighed hundreds of pounds, fights that lasted for hours and took place far from shore, and often ended up with the angler defeated and the fish swimming away.

Looking back, some of those stories were a little corny, crediting the fish with a craft and intelligence beyond anything that was remotely real.  But the one thing that they almost universally conveyed was a respect for the fish that we sought.  Small fish like flounder were described in familiar, almost friendly terms, while larger species—and by larger, I mean anything from a striped bass to a black marlin—were treated more heroically, as worthy foes, to be fought honorably, regardless of outcome.

No question, the writers of the day laid it on a little thick.  Still, no sport fisherman worthy of the name would be caught dead with a harpoon.  Only the commercial boats carried those.  Particularly among the offshore fleet, there were ethics, and things that just weren’t done.

That’s no longer the case, and I’ve written about it before.  I’m only returning to the topic because of a couple of articles that recently appeared in the angling press.  One of them actively ridiculed notions of ethics and sport; what was perhaps more offensive is that both tossed jabs at anglers who maintained their own ethical code, and seemed to encourage anglers to make catching a fish, by any means necessary, the singular goal of the recreational fisherman.

The less offensive of the two pieces appeared in The Fisherman magazine about one week ago.  Titled “Surf:  Are Eels a Non-Purist Method?” it extolled the use of eels as a striped bass bait, emphasizing the bait’s long history in the surf, and seemed to cast aspersions on anglers who eschewed eels in favor of plugs and other artificial lures that are arguably more challenging, and almost certainly less productive, than a live eel cast into the right patch of water.

I don’t want to suggest that there’ anything wrong with using eels for striped bass.  I know quite a few very good surfcasters, who have taken some very large fish from the beach, and as far as I know, every one of them will toss an eel when conditions are right.  But that doesn’t mean that other anglers can’t set higher standards, intentionally sticking to artificial lures, and perhaps going fishless on nights when eels are putting bass on the sand.  The fact that the article seemed to look down on such anglers as “purists” who are somehow foolish, or otherwise flawed, for not fishing eels when their plugs go untouched was a little offensive; we’re talking about sportfishing, after all, and challenge is the essence of sport.

Mirriam-Webster goes so far as to define a “sportsman” as

“a person considered with respect to living up to the ideals of sportsmanship,”

while defining “sportsmanship” as

“conduct (such as fairness, respect for one’s opponent, and graciousness in winning or losing) becoming to one participating in a sport.”

It’s not hard to believe that an angler who intentionally handicaps themselves with artificial lures rather than choosing to use a more productive eel or other live bait is a living example of both definitions, and is, at the least, entitled to respect rather than derision.

Which takes us to the second, and more objectionable of the two essays, an article that appeared in the June 30 edition of the San Diego Reader, titled “Using the rail on big fish—yes or no?”

To put things in perspective, the “big fish” that the article is referring to are bluefin tuna that include “some well over 200 pounds.”  That might sound like a big fish to someone used to catching largemouth bass and brown trout, but in a blue-water context, a 200 pound fish is not all that large.  A 200-pound Atlantic bluefin tuna would probably fall into what the National Marine Fisheries Service has defined as a “small medium” sized fish less than 73 inches in length, which is not even large enough to be legally harvested by a commercial tuna fisherman. 

The International Game Fish Association, which is responsible for maintaining the list of world record fish of various species, recognizes a 1,496-pound bluefin tuna (Thunnus thynnus)  and a 907-pound, 6-ounce Pacific bluefin tuna (Thunnus orientalis) as current all-tackle world records for those species of bluefin (there is also a third species, the southern bluefin, which rarely if ever enters the northern Pacific, and so is irrelevant to this discussion), thus, when put in an appropriate context, a 200-pound bluefin tuna is not really a “big fish” at all.

In that regard, it should also be noted that the International Game Fish Association does not merely record the largest fish caught by recreational fishermen; it also codifies what is generally considered sporting conduct amongst anglers, noting that such rules

“have been formulated…to promote ethical and sporting angling practices, to establish uniform regulations for the compilation of world game fish records, and to provide basic angling guidelines for use in fishing tournaments and any other group angling activities.

Both of the tuna world records mentioned above were caught in accordance with the IGFA’s “uniform regulations for the compilation of world game fish records,” which provide, among many other things, that

“The following acts will disqualify a catch…

“3.  Resting the rod in a rod holder, on the gunwale of the boat, or any other object while playing the fish.”

Thus, when the San Diego Reader article asks, “Using the rail on big fish—yes or no?” it was already embarking on an exploration of dubious ethical merit.  Sadly, it urged its readers to take the less ethical path, saying that

“the larger bluefin, able to dive unabated by the cold depths with their remarkable endothermic system, will often prevail.  With the heavier gear and fighting a 200-pound bluefin, it can become akin to lifting weights much heavier than a body can handle in a prolonged battle.

“This is where using the rail comes into play.  Modern standup rods typically have an extended fore grip and are tapered to handle the stress when rested on the rail.  The method is simple, squat down low with the rod fore grip on the rail and use the leverage to reduce the strain on the angler while fighting a large fish.”

In other words, instead of encouraging the angler to engage in a sporting contest with the tuna, the article encourages that angler to forego sportsmanship and cheat—even though far larger bluefin have been taken without resting a rod on the rail.

Of course, the author of the article wasn’t unaware of the sportsmanship angle, and did make a weak effort to address it, arguing that

“The physical exertion causes lactic acid to build up in the fish’s muscles.  This in turn leads to blood acidification which can disrupt the metabolism of the fish.  So using the rail is not a lack of sportsmanship, it is working smarter, not harder, and can make for better odds of survival on catch-and-release fishing while providing better food for the table.  Stand up and fight like a man may be an outdated mantra, and certainly should at least have exceptions.  Were we anglers really wanting to even up the odds, we would have to forego our modern boats, rods and reels, rod belts, harnesses, fighting chairs, and any other unnatural thing, and swim out and catch them with our teeth.”

I think that maybe the next time that I’m out in Yosemite National Park, I’m going to climb El Capitan.  Of course, I’ll hire a helicopter to take me over the steep stuff, and land me a couple yards from the summit, so I can walk the rest of the way, but that’s just climbing smarter, not harder.  And it’s good for the rock face, too, as I won’t be pulling on ropes and driving pitons, or otherwise damaging the surface.  And don’t say that I’m doing it the easy way, because if people really wanted a challenge, they wouldn’t use ropes or gloves or pitons at all; they’d toss away their carabiners, technical clothes, climbing shoes, and just scamper up the stones buck naked…

Makes just about as much sense as what the guy in the San Diego Reader was saying.

Without effort and pain, there is no such thing as a victory.

And I write that just four days after a friend engaged in the most intense fish fight of his life.

We were south of Fire Island, New York, drifting across a 20-fathom hump with the chum slowly leaking out of its pail, leaving a slick on the rippled sea.  A plankton bloom had tinted the ocean a strange, chalky green, and dropped visibility to almost nothing.  Still, menhaden pods painted the surface with irregular, dark brown patches, often passing close to the boat, so there were signs of life.

Even so, when noon passed without a single fish touching our baits, I wondered whether we should have fished elsewhere.

Finally, right at one o’clock, a rod went off as a fish picked up the bait that was drifting, at most, 25 feet below the chum pail.  The initial take was fast and strong, but unremarkable.  We had seen many such takes before.  But this time, the fish would not stop.

We got the angler strapped into a belt and harness, and he leaned back into the rod.  It was a 50-100 standup model, the reel loaded with 60-pound line.  With the drag set at 20 pounds, we expected the fight to end fairly soon.

It didn’t.

As line continued to peel from the spool, I lit up the boat’s diesels and began to back down, keeping the line centered over the transom.  It prevented the reel from being stripped, but the fish kept taking line for most of the time, except for the few instances when it suddenly changed direction, sometimes heading straight at the boat, when the angler could gain a little back.

Three hours into the fight, the fish showed no sign of tiring, but the angler still stood strong. 

Four hours in, the fish was just beginning to weaken, and I figured we’d have it up to the boat in another hour’s time.  The angler still stood, sipping water from time to time to avoid dehydration, leaning back against the reel’s drag, gaining line when he could and otherwise enduring whatever the fish chose to do. 

Maybe twenty minutes later, maybe a bit more, the angler began to gain line more quickly.  At one point, he claimed that the fish was shaking its head, but nonetheless he gained ground, until the fish—whatever it was—was probably fifty feet from the boat.  He leaned back against the fish’s pull.

The next thing I knew, the angler was falling backward, his line limp in the rising breeze.  After four hours and 45 minutes, the fish had broken free.

When the line was reeled to the boat, I looked at the break, and noticed that the line was scuffed and abraded in multiple places.

I can’t be sure of anything, but from the way the fish fought, I believe that it was a very large thresher shark.  We had hooked many threshers in that place before; the largest we ever brought near the boat weighed close to 400 pounds.  This one was far larger.

The fish fought deep for most of the time, suddenly changing direction from time to time the way that threshers typically do.  I think that the last time it did so, it wrapped the leader around the base of its tail, so that the “head shakes” the angler was feeling were really the tail slashing into the leader and line.  A 400 pound thresher is 14 or 15 feet long, so an even heavier fish would have been long enough to reach—and abrade—the line above the leader.

At the same time, the tail wrap forced my angler to bring the shark up backwards, slowing down the tempo of the fight, and giving the fish the opportunity to further weaken the line with its tail, because yes, the “head shakes” continued.

Under the circumstances, the end was probably inevitable; we never expected a fish that large, and the 50-pound gear we were fishing was just not enough to get the job done.  We might have had a chance to bring the fish boatside, but the tail wrap sealed our fate.

The angler, on the other hand, was more than up to the task.  He stood against the pull of the fish, and the 20 pounds of drag, for nearly five hours, never taking any sort of a break, and never even suggesting that he might give up the fight.  He plucked the rod out of the holder immediately upon the strike, and held onto it until the end.

He was exhausted and hurting—still hurting a couple days after the fight—but would have gone on if the fish had allowed.

It was his first really big fish, his first really disheartening loss, his first experience with a fish that left him completely wrung out and sore.  I fear that I might have done him a wrong, opening the door on a world that will hold him captive for the next 40  or 50 years.

I hope that I’m at the wheel, and he’s in my cockpit, when his next truly big fish comes along.  Should that scene play out, I can’t know how it might end, but I already know that one thing will be true:

He will not rest his rod on the rail.

 

 

 

 

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WHY REGULATE RECREATIONAL FISHERIES?

 

Photo: In a different era of fishing technology

When I was young, marine recreational fisheries, at least in the northeast, were virtually unregulated. There was a 16-inch (fork length) minimum size for striped bass that was in place throughout the region, but other than that, anglers could take as many fish as they wanted, regardless of size, at any time of the year.

Anglers could even sell their fish if they wanted to, without any license and without worrying about sizes or quotas. The only exception to that was, once again, striped bass, which could not be legally sold in Connecticut, although commercial bass fisheries thrived in neighboring states.

In February 1962, my parents took me to Florida for the first time, and both my father and I were surprised to see how many of that state’s saltwater fish were governed by minimum sizes.

Of course, in the early 1960s, the most common fishing boat on the Connecticut side of Long Island Sound was probably a 14-foot Old Town rowboat, that was made out of wood and powered by a 5 or maybe a 7 ½ horsepower outboard. There were a few fiberglass runabouts showing up at the docks, and a fair number of somewhat larger wooden boats powered by small inboard engines, but generally speaking, anglers’ boats at that time were small, wooden, and slow. Electronics, other than the occasional “ship-to-shore” radio, were virtually unknown.

Fishing tackle was equally crude. While monofilament lines were beginning to take over the market, the monofilaments available in the early 1960s tended to be springy, thick for their strength, and prone to “backlash,” or tangle when cast, causing many anglers to stick with braided nylon “squidding line,” braided Dacron, or even the rot-prone linen lines of an earlier generation. Salt-water rods tended to be thick and unresponsive, often cheaply made from solid fiberglass. Spinning reels were becoming more and more common, but most anglers still fished with older, revolving spool models.

 Fishermen usually didn’t venture far from their moorings. Where we lived, near the western end of Long Island Sound, it was about seven miles from the Connecticut coast to the Long Island shore, and most anglers saw that as too long a voyage to take on a regular basis. Few anglers regularly traveled more than a mile or two from the mouth of their harbor.

Yet, they caught fish. Winter flounder were abundant, and could be caught throughout the year. Tautog (we called them blackfish) haunted every offshore rockpile, and were particularly abundant during the spring and fall. During those years, anglers found scup, eels, snapper (juvenile) bluefish, smelt, and tomcod in abundance. Striped bass were there too, but the smaller, saltwater panfish were so abundant that most fishermen targeted them, and usually left the bass fishing up to the small group of anglers who specialized in stripers, and haunted the rocky shores of Long Island Sound in the deepest depths of the night.

There is no reliable data on fishing effort or landings back then, so it’s impossible to accurately compare landings from sixty years ago to what anglers are catching now, but having grown up in those times, I can confidently say that with respect to the most common species, catch per unit effort was significantly higher then than what it is now.

 The first somewhat reliable data on recreational fishing was released for the 1981 fishing year. That data showed that, in 1981, recreational fishermen on the Atlantic coast of the United States made over 87 million fishing trips, caught about 457 million fish—a little over five fish per trip—and took about 319 million of those fish home. While those numbers might seem high, 1981 actually marked a low point in recreational fishing effort; such effort jumped to over 101 million trips in 1982, and hasn’t fallen significantly below 100 million trips since.

The number of fish caught per trip, on the other hand, has gone the other way.

By 1990, angler trips had increased to over 104 million on the Atlantic Coast, but the number of fish caught fell to 358 million—just a little over 3 ½ fish per trip—while the number of fish retained by the region’s recreational fishermen dropped to 199 million.

It’s probably important to note that by 1981, and certainly by 1990, fishing boat technology had made very large strides forward. Fiberglass ruled the marketplace. Fast center-console outboards rigged with LORAN (a position-finding tool used in the same way as today’s GPS), depthfinders, and other electronics allowed even less affluent anglers to run long distances in search of declining populations of fish. By 1990, I was operating a 25-foot center console that could reach the fishing grounds of Hudson Canyon, 70 miles offshore, in less than 2 ½ hours.

It’s not hard to argue that the increase in recreational fishermen and recreational fishing effort, plus improved recreational fishing technology, combined with commercial landings, led to a decline in fish abundance, and in recreational landings.

In 1996, the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act, which governs all fishing in federal waters, was substantially amended by the passage of the Sustainable Fisheries Act which, for the first time, required that federal fishery managers prevent overfishing and rebuild overfished stocks within a time certain. The Sustainable Fisheries Act marked a turning point in federal fisheries management, and led to the recovery of many formerly overfished stocks.

 Commercial harvest was easily constrained by implementing hard quotas and the implementation of limited entry programs, which regulated the number of commercial fisherman that might participate in a given fishery. However, similar measures were hard to impose on the recreational fishery, which has far more participants, is typically not required to report its catch, and continues to grow unchecked.

 By the year 2000, Atlantic coast anglers took about 132 million individual fishing trips. That figure increased to slightly over 159 million trips in 2010, when effort peaked, before falling back to nearly 136 million in 2020 and 137 million in 2021.

At the same time, angling technology has continued to evolve. The simple depthfinders of the 1980s, which etched out a picture of the ocean bottom beneath an angler’s boat on a roll of heat-sensitive paper, have been replaced by multi-frequency machines that, in their most advanced forms, can scan not only below a boat but 360 degrees around it as well. Some units are so precise that they allow an angler to present a bait or lure to an individual fish, and watch the fish’s reaction in real time.

 Instead of the relatively slow boats of the previous era, today’s anglers can buy fast center console sportfishermen powered by three or four large outboard engines, boats capable of cruising in excess of 40 knots that make it practical to fish spots over 100 miles away, yet return to port on the same day.

 While anglers once had to take the time to learn how to anchor a boat over a deep-water wreck or piece of hard-bottom structure, so that the boat wouldn’t swing off the piece and onto unproductive soft bottom, today they may purchase electric trolling motors that combine with a Global Positioning System receiver to maintain their boats over a productive location without ever needing to drop an anchor over the side.

 Such leaps in technology have made it easier for even average anglers to find and catch fish. When fishery managers propose regulations intended to constrain recreational landings, and maintain them at levels that are sustainable in the long term, they are often attacked by members of the recreational fishing industry and various “anglers’ rights” organizations, who claim that such regulations aren’t necessary, that recreational fishing is inherently different from commercial fishing, and that recreational regulations should be less prescriptive than those governing the commercial sector.

 Recreational fishermen often argue that fishery managers should be expending most of their effort regulating the commercial sector, because it kills far more fish than anglers do. Such argument is intuitively attractive, because it’s difficult to believe that someone fishing with a rod, a reel, and a couple of hooks might compete with the vast nets of commercial fishermen. Yet, in the case of many species, the facts demonstrate that it’s not true.

While commercial fishermen dominate the fisheries for certain species, such as menhaden and walleye pollock, where their catch is measured in the billions of pounds, when it comes to species that are avidly sought by recreational fishermen, anglers are often responsible for most of the landings.

 For example, in the case of striped bass, which have remained overfished since 2009, many anglers believe that elimination of the commercial fishery would put the stock on the road to recovery. Yet commercial fishermen are responsible for only 10 percent of all fishing mortality; anglers kill the other 90 percent of the bass.

 Similarly, anglers are responsible for about 84 percent of East Coast bluefish landings, as well as most of the release mortality, 75 percent of weakfish landings, and 96 percent of the landings of Atlantic cobia. A number of other fish exhibit similar patterns.

 A comparison of commercial and recreational landings in the New England and mid-Atlantic regions shows that, even for species of bottom fish that are often thought of as commercial species, recreational fishermen account for a majority of the landings, harvesting 62 percent of the black sea bass and 59 percent of the scup, percentages that, in both cases, are far in excess of the recreational sector’s allocation.

 It is thus clear that, in the case of many popular recreational species, recreational fishermen are responsible for the greatest share of the landings. So when anglers ask, “Why do we have such restrictive regulations?” the answer is clear.

Such regulations are necessary because anglers catch, and keep, a lot of fish, and because without effective regulations, tomorrow’s recreational fishermen would find themselves with little to catch when they ventured out onto the sea.

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This essay first appeared in “From the Waterfront,” the blog of the Marine Fish Conservation Network, which can be found at http://conservefish.org/blog/

 

A NEW LOOK AT SHARK DEPREDATION

 

Shark depredation, defined as a shark striking and eating part or all of a fish that has been hooked by a commercial or recreational fisherman, has been a hot issue in recent years.

It has even led to legislation in Congress, where Rep. Robert Whitman (R-VA) introduced the so-called “SHARKED Act,” H.R. 4051, which would, if passed and signed into law, require the Secretary of Commerce (in reality, the National Marine Fisheries Service) to establish a task force comprised of representatives from regional fishery management councils and regional marine fisheries commissions, state fishery managers, the National Marine Fisheries Service and individuals knowledgeable about the highly migratory species fishery, shark management and behavior, and shark ecology.  Such task force would meet to examine the shark depredation issue, and would be required to issue a report of its findings within two years after the bill’s passage.

The House of Representatives passed the SHARKED Act in February.  It now awaits action in the Senate, where passage is far from assured.

The impetus behind the SHARKED Act is a perceived increase in shark depredation, particularly of fish hooked by recreational fishermen.  A recent article in Marlin magazine asserted that

“these events are becoming more frequent, to the point in certain fisheries where it’s nearly assured that you’ll lose at least a significant portion of your catch to sharks…

“The Webster’s definition of depredation is ‘1: to lay waste, plunder, ravage.  2: to engage in plunder.’  That’s certainly fitting to what’s currently happening in places like North Carolina’s famed yellowfin tuna fishery—a mainstay of its extensive charter fleet—as well as South Florida during sailfish season or the Gulf of Mexico’s red snapper fishery.  Sharks are drawn to an area by the sound of boat engines and quickly learn to take advantage of hooked tuna, snapper or sailfish, turning them into an easy meal.  In addition to the frustration that sharks cause, there is also a worry that they can have a significant negative effect on many different fisheries, leading to stricter regulations intended to offset or avoid shark interactions, as well as losses among the local charter fleets.  After all, why spend hundreds or thousands of dollars to go fishing only to see your prized catch right before your eyes?

As the Marlin article notes, the shark depredation issue is nothing new.  It has been

“a part of sport fishing long before Hemingway’s fictional Santiago won his battle with a giant blue marlin, only to lose most of his prize at boatside as immortalized in his literary classic The Old Man and the Sea.”

But in the past few years, such depredation has risen to the forefront of anglers’ concerns.  A real hostility toward sharks has emerged in many fisheries, particularly in the southeast and Gulf of Mexico.  However, it isn’t completely clear whether the increase in shark depredation has been exaggerated by the recreational fishing community.  And if the increase is real, researchers need to decide whether it is caused by an increase in the number of sharks, a change in shark behavior, and/or other, yet to be determined factors.

A newly published paper that originally appeared in Fish and Fisheries on May 24 takes a new look, and sheds some new light, on the depredation issue.

Titled “Depredation:  An old conflict with the sea,” and authored by James Marcus Drymon, et al, the paper examines the depredation issue by focusing on depredation in the northern Gulf of Mexico off Alabama, and using fishery-independent data to evaluate some of anglers’ assumptions about the issue.

The paper, like the Marlin magazine article, begins by acknowledging that shark depredation in recreational fisheries is an old problem, dating back to the 1930s, when Ernest Hemingway and other blue water anglers were striving to land unmutilated giant bluefin tuna off the island of Bimini.  Offshore anglers had no love for sharks in those days, with Hemingway openly admitting that he dealt with potential depredators by luring them to the surface with a big chunk of bait and then shooting them with a Thompson submachine gun.

However, the paper then notes,

“in many ways, this conflict has become more complicated.  In Hemingway’s time, sharks were at best a nuisance, and at worst a danger.  The modern shark conservation ethos did not yet exist because none was needed.  At the time, sharks were considered an ‘underutilized resource’, and attempts to develop and incentivize US shark fisheries were underway.  Shark fishing expanded throughout the 1970s and 1980s, and shark conservation efforts did not begin in earnest until the early 1990s, after several shark populations had already been overfished…

“While several explanations were offered, when asked which factors were primarily driving this increase [in shark depredation], the anglers most often expressed two sentiments, ‘overpopulation’ of sharks (i.e. shark population increase) and/or learned behavior by sharks could explain the recent increase in depredation reported by anglers.  [citations omitted]”

The paper’s authors addressed the first perception—that shark populations were increasing—by examining data from a bottom longline survey conducted off Alabama during the years 2012-2022, and examining the catch-per-unit-effort of sandbar sharks, a species that is responsible for a significant share of the depredation in the region.  Although the still-overfished sandbar population seems to be slowly increasing, the catch-per-unit-effort showed wide year-to-year variations, and did not indicate a clear increase in abundance.

To address the question of whether sharks were adapting, and effectively learning how to depredate more effectively, the researchers turned to additional fishery-independent data, in this case the depredation rate of red snapper caught in the same bottom longline survey that provided the sandbar shark data.  However, that data indicated that the rate of red snapper depredation actually decreased significantly over the relevant period.

As the paper’s authors observed,

“If sharks were learning to depredate, we would expect an increase in the rate of red snapper depredation over time as more sharks learned the behavior.  However, the declining trend in red snapper depredation does not appear to support the idea that an increase in learned behavior among sharks can explain the increase in depredation perceived by anglers.”

While the paper’s authors don’t deny that both an increased shark population and learned behavior might contribute to depredation, they further observed that

“The trends detailed above suggest that increases in shark populations and/or learned behavior in sharks do not fully explain the increase in shark depredation documented by anglers.  Something else may be contributing to the increased conflict…Using angler effort NOAA’s Marine Recreational Information Program, we can see a clear increase in the number of charter-for-hire fishing trips off Alabama in recent years.

“While far from a smoking gun, the above exercise highlights the complexities of this human-wildlife conflict.  In 1935, Hemingway was one of a small group of anglers fishing a virgin stock of bluefin tuna in Bimini.  Today, there are more anglers on the water than any time in history, and the stocks they target are far from virgin biomass.  Are there more sharks in the [Gulf of Mexico] than there were 20 years ago?  Very likely.  Are there more sharks in the [Gulf of Mexico] than there were in Hemingway’s time?  Likely not.  [citations omitted]”

And that temporal perspective matters when it comes to sharks, because the researchers noted that younger anglers don’t really have any experience with a healthy shark population.

“[In another study,] there was clear evidence of shifting baselines; that is, the gradual acceptance of a reduction in the abundance or size of a species.  Older anglers viewed changes in shark sizes more accurately than younger anglers; specifically, only individuals over 60 years of age remembered a time when larger sharks were more common.  [citations omitted]”

I can certainly relate to that comment; having passed the 60-year point a while ago, and having participated in the Atlantic shark fishery for close to 50 years, I remember sharks—most particularly duskies and shortfin makos—that were far larger and much more abundant than what we see in the same northeastern waters today.  I even recall the late 1960s, when female sandbar sharks an honest seven feet long were occasionally caught in Long Island Sound, off Connecticut’s southwestern corner, something that hasn’t occurred in a very, very long time.

Thus, I also recall a level of shark depredation, even on fish caught from the New England party boats that I once fished on, that is far higher than people experience today.  Yet people with far fewer years of experience look at me askance when I suggest that the current level of depredation is really nothing new.

The findings of the paper’s authors, which focused on a single region, single shark species, and single target of depredation, may or may not be transferrable to other fisheries and other places.  Depredation may have multiple causes, depending on the region and the fishery involved.

Yet perhaps more than anything else, the authors’ final conclusion rings true:

“[P]erceived conflict is as potent as real conflict.  Arguably, it may not matter if depredation in the [Gulf of Mexico] has increased or decreased; the overwhelming perception from stakeholders is an increase in depredation, and this is the perceived (or real) conflict that must be addressed.  [citation omitted]”

We can only hope, and help to ensure that when the issue is addressed by fishery managers, facts, and not emotions, prevail.

 

CATCHABILITY

 

Fishermen and fishery managers often disagree about the health of fish populations.

A while ago, I reported on a recentstudy that tried to explain just why that is so, and why fishermen andfisheries scientists can look at the same fishery and come away with completelydifferent conclusions.  But in today’s edition of One Angler’s Voyage, I want to spend a little more time on one particular source of conflicting perceptions, the question of “catchability.”

Fishermen often, and understandably, tend to gauge the health of fish stocks by what they are catching.  If they’re not catching fish, the stock must be in trouble.  On the other hand, if they’re catching well, the stock must be healthy, and when biologists suggest otherwise, they’re labeled as office-based pencil pushers who “don’t spend time on the water;” if the comment comes from within the fishing community, it’s quickly dismissed as coming from someone who isn’t a “real fisherman,” who knows what’s actually going on.

Yet those making such superficial and simplistic comments rarely take the time to try to understand why other people’s perceptions vary so far from their own.

The answer is often “catchability,” which the International Seafood Sustainability Foundation desfines as

“The extent to which a stock is susceptible to fishing; quantitatively, the fraction of a fish stock that is caught by a defined unit of the fishing effort.”

In other words, sometimes fish can be relatively easy to catch, even though the stock is depleted, while at other times, even fish that are part of a healthy stock can be dismayingly hard to find.

The recent history of the striped bass fishery in the New York Bight provides a good look at the catchability issue.

There is no doubt that the striped bass stock is overfished.  The most recent benchmark stock assessment found that bass have been overfished since 2009, while the latest stock assessment update revealed that, while the spawning stock biomass is slowly increasing, it remains below the threshold level that defines an overfished stock.

Yet New Jersey’s spring striped bass catch data seems to tell an entirely different story.

For the years when the stripedbass spawning stock biomass was at its peak—let’s say, for the sake of this discussion, the five years between 2002 and 2006—the number of striped bass caught in all of New Jersey during March and April averaged a little under 550,000 fish.

For the next 14 years, as the spawning stock biomass declined and the stock became overfished, the number of striped bass caught off New Jersey in March and April actually increased, averaging about 665,000 fish for the years 2007 through 2020.

But then something remarkable happened.  In 2021, New Jersey’s recreational fishermen caught slightly over 4 million striped bass, most of those fish coming from the vicinity of Raritan Bay.  That number dropped to about 1.7 million bass in 2022 and 2023, but was still well above any year prior to 2021.  Not all of those fish were caught in or around Raritan Bay, but there is little doubt that the Bay’s sharp increase in striped bass abundance was responsible for most of the spike.

Raritan Bay began to develop a reputation as the new promised land for striped bass anglers.  In an April 2023 article in Salt Water Sportsman, the author declared,

“Montauk has long been known as ‘Mecca’ for striped bass fishing, but I think that’s about to change.  New York’s famed location is going to have to give up the title to its little brother, New Jersey.”

But he may have spoken too soon.  During March/April 2024, New Jersey anglers only caught a little over 1 million striped bass, less than they caught in 2005, 2007, or 2009, strong years that occurred during a 21-year period when catches were relatively low.

Something similar occurred in the fall.

During the period of peak striped bass abundance, 2002-2006, New Jersey’s striped bass catch during November and December averaged around 1.8 million fish.  For the 14 years between 2007 and 2020, that average declined, to around 1.65 million bass per year, with annual catch generally tracking the size of the spawning stock biomass.

But beginning in 2021, catch spiked to levels never recorded in this century, reaching nearly 3.2 million fish in 2021, about 4 million in 2022, and 6.1 million in the last two months of 2023.  Again, much of that catch occurred in the New York Bight, although the majority of it happened in the ocean, and not in Raritan Bay.

There was such a disconnect between what the stock assessments were saying and what the fishermen in the New York Bight were catching that some anglers, and many members of the for-hire fishing fleet, refused to admit that the striped bass stock was not in good health.

Some comments submitted to the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s Atlantic Striped Bass Management Board, prior to its consideration of Addendum II to Amendment 7 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Atlantic Striped Bass, reflected such anglers’ and captains' disbelief that fishing in New York Bight could be so good if the stock was not in good shape.  The commenters said things like

“in the New York Bight area we now have some of the best striper fishing I have ever seen in my life.  This is due to the fact that the Hudson River stock is in great shape.  However, we are denied access to them because of the declining Chesapeake Bay stock.  I believe that as the population of the Hudson River stock increases so does their range.  They are heading further North, South and East providing great sport in areas where they never used to travel to.”

And,

“I am absolutely sure that there are many more Stripers in the population today than at any time in my life time.  As a matter of fact even as I am writing this there is fantastic striper fishing going on from Long Island, New York to Virginia Beach.”

As well as,

“The fishing this Fall in New York and New Jersey is unbelievable.  I read where, on an average trip, every patron on a 65 foot head boats [sic] lands at least five fish a trip in the 40 to 50 pound range.  The fishing continued for weeks.  Where did these fish come from?  It is my believe [sic] that your data collection system has missed large schools of large fish.”

And finally,

“New Jersey has the most exciting, and one can argue the healthiest, Striped Bass fishery in many generations.  Conservation is an important measure to ensure a sustainable future for this amazing fishery for a generation to come—no one doubts that—but with such a great fishery unique to this area, it begs the question of whether we need to come to terms with a truth, backed by data—not all waters governed by ASMFC are created equal.

“The 2023 Emergency Action was a commendable action to preserve the Chesapeake Bay stock—which isn’t healthy—but data shows the Hudson River stock continues to outperform its average and there is an abundance of bass in all size ranges.  In addition to scientific evidence, anecdotal reports from party boat and charter boat captains will tell you that they haven’t seen the type of Striped Bass migrations in the Spring and Fall that we experience today…

“The 2023 Emergency Action’s application in New Jersey is not backed by science, data or any educated fisherperson’s POV in the area.  It’s an unnecessary protection that creates unnecessary barriers of entry to this sport…costing the for-hire fleet and those that it supports (bait shops and other businesses supported by fisherman [sic]) dearly.”

In each case, the commenter was willing to advance a position that has no scientific support (“the population of the Hudson River stock increases,” “there are many more Stripers in the population today than at any time in my  life time,” “your data collection system has missed large schools of large fish,” “the Hudson River stock continues to outperform its average.”) than to consider the possibility that there may be a reason that they are catching more bass in recent years, despite the depleted stock.

And there is a reason:  The recent abundance of menhaden in the New York Bight.

The author of the Salt Water Sportsman article alluded to that fact when he wrote,

“Jersey politicians did one thing right: Getting the Omega 3 bunker boats out of state waters.  That has allowed a vast biomass throughout the year in Jersey waters.  This draws behemoth bass into the bays, river systems and alongshore to fatten up on omnipresent adult bunker.”

For it was the presence of the bunker—Atlantic menhaden—in Raritan Bay and the New York Bight, in far greater numbers than in past years, that drove the striped bass fishery.  The big bass bunched up under the bunker schools, making them far easier to find and far easier to catch, than they were before 2021.  The striped bass did not suddenly become more abundant—given the size of the fish being caught, if it was really a matter of abundance; if it were, that abundance would have been seen in earlier years’ catch data, as even larger numbers of younger fish passed through the fishery.

The Hudson River did not suddenly begin turning out large numbers bass that could somehow, miraculously, grow from egg to 40 or 50 pounds over the course of a single year.

But the menhaden could concentrate the available striped bass in a relatively small area and make them easier for anglers to find and to hook—that is, the bunker made the bass for more catchable.

It's no coincidence that in the spring of 2024, when menhaden abundance in Raritan Bay was lower than it had been in the three preceding years, New Jersey anglers started catching fewer striped bass.  Those that found and fished over menhaden schools still managed to catch a lot of fish, but with schools harder to find, the overall number of striped bass caught plummeted.

And that's not a bad thing.

While increased catchability might prove a temporary boon for anglers, it doesn’t do much good for the fish, as it leads to an unexpectedly high number of bass being removed from the population, as either landings or release mortality, and because it makes anglers doubt the science behind fisheries management, and reduces their willingness to work with the management system.

The difference between catchability and abundance is very real.

So when a fisherman, whether recreational or commercial, starts catching a big load of fish, their first reaction ought not to be “There are plenty of fish in the ocean; the science has to be wrong,” but rather “With fish this easy to catch, we’d better not take home too many,” because further depleting an already depleted stock is never a good idea.

WHAT'S HAPPENING WITH BLACK SEA BASS?

 

New York’s black sea bass season opens today, and I’m curious what it will look like.

Family obligations, along with an unfriendly ocean, are going to keep me ashore, although I hope to be able to get out next week and sit on a wreck or two; black sea bass have long been one of my favorite local food fish, and the start of the season is usually the best time to take a few home.

I’m not sure how many black sea bass—or, at least, how many legal black sea bass—anglers will be taking home this year, for while the fish became very abundant over the past 15 years or so, before tapering off a little recently, there has been a noticeable drop-off in the size of those caught.  That’s true here in New York, and I’ve recently also heard of anglers complaining that Massachusetts black sea bass are also declining in size.

The black sea bass stock was overfished as recently as 2007, then staged a spectacular recovery.  Spawning stock biomass peaked at about 240 percent of its target level in 2014, before slowly declining to its current level of about 180 percent of the SSB target.  It appears that mild overfishing might have occurred in 2021, the terminal year of the most recent research track stock assessment; a management track assessment, scheduled for release later this summer, will provide anglers and fishery managers with a more up-to-date picture of where the stock stands right now.

However, regardless of abundance—and the management-track assessment will gauge stock health strictly in terms of spawning stock biomass, and not the size of the individual fish—the seeming decline in the number of larger black sea bass, if it is occurring over a wide swath of the fish’s range, and not merely off the South Shore of Long Island, ought to give managers cause for concern.

Fifteen or so years ago, the black sea bass stock was much smaller than it is today, but it also drew far fewer recreational fishermen.  In 2010, New England anglers made a little over 190,000 trips primarily targeting black sea bass.  By 2015, that number had almost doubled, to nearly 350,000 trips; by 2021, the number of trips doubled again, to more than 785,000.  Neighboring New York saw a somewhat less pronounced increase in angling effort, with directed black sea bass trips increasing from about 175,000 in 2010 to 650,00 trips in 2015, before falling back to about 320,000 in 2021.

Such increase was unquestionably due to the increase in black sea bass availability, but anglers switching effort from a declining summer flounder population onto abundant black sea bass also played a role.  New England anglers’ directed summer flounder trips dropped from about 630,000 in 2010 to about 430,000 in 2021, even though there was a slight increase, to roughly 775,000 trips in 2015 as anglers responded to the strong showing of legal fluke from the 2008 and 2009 year classes.  New York anglers showed a similar trend, with effort dropping from about 2.8 million trips in 2010 to a little under 2.0 million in 2021, with a spike to about 4.2 million trips in 2015 as anglers responded to temporarily increased summer flounder abundance.

Fishery managers never really got a handle on the increasing effort in the black sea bass fishery; their inability to predict the changes in angler behavior was a textbook case of management uncertainty, and cried out for the establishment of an annual catch target in the recreational fishery, which might have been set below the sector’s annual catch limit and would have provided a buffer for the uncertainties created by changes in angling effort.  The National Standard Guidelines issued by the National Marine Fisheries Service call for such a response, saying

“[Annual catch targets], or the functional equivalent, are recommended in the system of [accountability measures] so the [annual catch limit] is not exceeded.  An [annual catch target] is an amount of annual catch of a stock or stock complex that is the management target of the fishery, and accounts for management uncertainty in controlling the catch at or below the [annual catch limit]…”

However, neither NMFS nor the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council chose to follow such Guidelines which, unfortunately, do not have the force of law, and the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s Summer Flounder, Scup, and Black Sea Bass Management Board, which is not legally bound to any performance standard, did not consider the issue.  Thus, recreational fishermen chronically exceeded their sector’s annual catch limit; eventually, spurred by pressure from a recreational fishing industry that is always seeking new ways to maintain or increase anglers’ kill, the Council, NMFS, and the Management Board adopted a new management strategy, the so-called “Percent Change Approach,” which makes it even more likely that anglers will exceed their ACL.

Even so, anglers continue to kill more black sea bass than any established limit supposedly allows, and do so with near-complete impunity.  Chronic overages supposedly triggered mandatory accountability measures for the 2024 fishing season, but the accountability measures contained in the management plan are so toothless that anglers were subject to no real accountability at all.

Ultimately, actions have consequences, and we now might be seeing the consequences of managers’ failure to adequately constrain recreational black sea bass landings.

In 2010, the black sea bass bag limit was high (I think it was 15 fish), the size limit was something around 13 inches and the season was long, but because effort was relatively low, I could still run out to a well-known and easy-to-find wreck on the Fourth of July, find few other boats competing for space on the piece, and limit out easily, with a fair number of fish over 3 pounds, some over 3 ½, and none so small that they required measuring.

Five years later, the fish weren’t as big as they had been, the bag limit was smaller, the season was shorter, and the size limit a bit larger, but as the included photo shows, there were still plenty of quality fish to go around, and it didn’t take long to catch them (the two fish in the photo weighed a combined 7 pounds, 14 ounces, with the larger weighing 4 pounds 2, although by 2015, the average size began to shrink quickly once the season got underway.

Today, it can take a couple of hours—maybe more—to land just three fish over the 16 ½-inch minimum, even on the day that the season begins.  The fishing club that I belong to runs a year-long contest for a number of different species, including black sea bass, awarding first, second, and third place to the largest weighed in.  Although the club has 90 members, plus spouses and minor children, only two black sea bass were weighed in last year, and both weighed less than three pounds.

Granted, most of the bottom off Long Island’s South Shore is sand and gravel, with little structure other than wrecks and artificial reefs to hold black sea bass in any numbers.  Anglers can pick the quality fish off those pieces quickly, particularly when the party boats are active.  Fishing is better on the rock bottoms that prevail to the north and east.

Still, when a fishery loses most of its big fish, and becomes dependent on only a few, recently produced year classes, it is not a good sign.

Right now, there’s no reason to panic, because the spawning stock is still very large and recruitment of new fish into the population has been strong.  Although abundance has been trending downward for the last decade or so, it remains well above target and even a significantly smaller spawning stock biomass, which varies a little above and below target over the years, constitutes a management success story.  Anything more than that is a bonus.

However, should spawning stock biomass fall below 150 percent of its target level—something that probably hasn’t happened yet—the management regime under the Percent Change Approach will become a little bit more restrictive.  That could easily happen a few years from now if managers don’t get recreational overages under control.

We should also remember that the National Marine Fisheries Service may have overestimated recreational effort, catch, and landings.  

While that may seem like a good thing, because it means that anglers killed fewer fish than managers believe, it can actually be a curse in disguise.  That’s because the stock assessment includes recreational landings as part of the data used to calculate the size of the black sea bass stock.  If those landings estimates are too high, then the estimate of stock size are too large as well, and the annual catch limits based on the stock size estimate—for both the recreational and the commercial sectors—are too high, and could well lead to overfishing, and a further decline in abundance, if the stock is smaller than managers believed.

The good news is that black sea bass abundance remains high enough that, even under something approaching a worst-case scenario, it’s unlikely that any long-lasting harm will be done.

The bad news is that if managers keep taking black sea bass for granted, and assuming that high abundance will continue to offset anglers killing too many fish, they might eventually face a reckoning that will probably be harder on managers, and the fishermen who followed their advice, than on the species itself.

As is so often the case with so many species, while the stock remains healthy, a little bit of precaution ought to be exercised to keep things on track.