HOW NOT TO MANAGE A FISHERY

 

I still remember a night, maybe 25 years ago, when I was Chairman of the Babylon Tuna Club, and was running a meeting addressing one of the more contentious issues in club history:  Whether the club should adopt minimum sizes for fish entered in its annual and weekend contests, which were higher than the minimums imposed by the state and federal governments.

Just about everyone liked the idea when it was first proposed, but after a couple of years of members having their fish barred from contests because they didn’t meet the new minimums, quite of few folks decided that the club minimums were a bad idea, because they apparently thought that $25 or $50 or $100 that they didn’t win might have made a big change in their lives.

The debate got pretty heated, and a lot of angry and a few just plain dumb things were said, but one of the comments that I’ll never forget went something like “The state has scientists setting the regulations, so we shouldn’t be trying to adopt more restrictive club rules.”

“The state has scientists setting the rules.”

Ahh, if only that were true.

The unfortunate fact is that fisheries regulation is a political process.  While I know, and have known, many state fisheries scientists, know how hard they work, and how much they want to do the right thing, I have also seen all their hard work go for nought when somebody who has the governor’s, or other high-ranking official’s, ear disagrees with the professionals’ assessment and convinces the folks in the Executive Mansion to take things in a different direction.

Almost without exception, that direction was the wrong one, but if the right (or, perhaps, the wrong) person shares a Scotch or two with the ultimate decisionmakers, belongs to the right political party, and/or makes appropriate contributions to the appropriate candidates’ campaigns, all the science in the world won’t change the outcome.

It’s a shame, because the people who should be driving the management process—the people who are formally trained in fisheries science, who have spent years in the field learning their craft, and who have developed the professional expertise to draft and analyze management measures—often have far less impact on management measures than they should.  At the state level they are, after all, answerable to the state’s governor; in just about every state, the head of the Conservation Department, or Environmental Department, or whatever the state chooses to name the management agency, has either known the governor for a long time or has been otherwise active in the governor’s party, and is far more likely to resolve controversial issues based on political, rather than conservation, concerns.

So it’s pretty typical to see the fisheries scientists make the best recommendations that they can, trying to maintain a healthy fish stock while also being aware of the impacts of their decision on the various stakeholders.  The professionals’ regulatory proposals then go through lawyers, which may change some things for strictly legal reasons, before they are kicked upstairs for approval at the agency’s highest levels.

Throughout that process, everyone with an interest in the outcome—anglers’ organizations, commercial fishermen and their organizations, the party boats, the charter boats, the tackle shops, and the rest—pull whatever strings they might pull, use whatever contacts they might have, and call in whatever favors are owed to either support or overrule the professional managers’ decisions, with the opponents hoping to either kill the regulation outright or to change it in ways that will better serve their interests, even if they end up hurting the resource and everyone else in the end.

And when those efforts fail—in this sort of contest, once everyone starts to fight everyone else, someone is bound to fail—the next step is to call for the legislature to come in and pass a bill that will overrule whatever the agency decides, and instead benefit those with the greatest legislative influence, even if the legislation that emerges will cause everyone real harm in the end.

The latest example of that sort of thing is happening now in the House of Representatives, where Rep. Jared Golden (D-ME) teamed up with Rep. Michael Lawlor (R-NY) to introduce an amendment to the Fiscal Year 2025 Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, which would supposedly prevent regulators from increasing the minimum size for lobster caught in the Gulf of Maine.

Should that effort succeed, it could well cause long-term harm to both the Gulf of Maine lobster stock and the lobstermen of Maine.

The unavoidable truth is that lobsters are impacted by warming waters, and the Gulf of Maine is warming faster than most oceanic regions on Earth.

Twenty years ago, the Southern New England stock of American lobster began to show signs of distress, as landings dropped sharply.  Such drop was not unexpected given that both abundance and recruitment had been declining in the face of high fishing mortality.  However, fishery managers were slow to respond to the decline, as lobstermen tried to argue around the findings of the 2006 stock assessment.

At an April 2006 meeting of the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s American Lobster Advisory Panel, panel members were

“concerned that the stock assessment did not take into account the increases in natural mortality (M) in some areas…[Advisory Panel] members were also concerned that the assessment does not take into account predation of lobsters by striped bass, cod, and dogfish to name a few.”

It was a classic, and all too typical, example of fishermen trying to escape increased regulation by placing “blame” for decreased abundance on naturally occurring factors, while doing their best to ignore the fact that, regardless of the cause of a stock’s decline, current levels of harvest were, nonetheless, unsustainable.  And the fishermen did have substantial success in delaying the management process and assuring that the ASMFC would not adopt measures stringent enough to halt the decline in lobster abundance.

The ASMFC’s American Lobster Technical Committee issued a 2010 report titled Recruitment Failure in The Southern New England Lobster Stock, which stated that

“Since the release of the 2009 Assessment, additional monitoring information has been reviewed which documents that the reproductive potential and abundance of the [Southern New England] stock is continuing to fall lower than the data presented in the latest assessment.  The [American Lobster Technical Committee] contends that the stock is experiencing recruitment failure caused by a combination of environmental drivers and continued fishing mortality…

“The southern New England stock is critically depleted and well below the minimum threshold abundance.  Abundance indices are at or near time series lows, and this condition has persisted.”

The report further stated that,

“Given additional evidence of recruitment failure in [the southern New England stock] and the impediments to stock rebuilding, the Technical Committee now recommends a 5-year moratorium in the [southern New England] stock area…”

Even after an external peer review, conducted by three internationally recognized experts, essentially endorsed the Technical Committee’s advice, neither fishermen nor fisheries managers were willing to take it.  Instead, they subordinated the scientific recommendations to the short-term desires of the lobster fishermen.  The ASMFC’s American Lobster Management Board hemmed and hawed, continually proposing trivial solutions to a very real and serious problem, and never mustered the courage to stand up to hostile stakeholders, and do what was needed to halt the lobster’s decline.  Thus, the ASMFC’s summary of the 2020 American lobster stock assessment notes that

“The abundance threshold is calculated as the average of the three highest abundance years during the low abundance regime.  A stock abundance level below this threshold is considered significantly depleted and in danger of stock collapse.  This was the only reference point recommended for the [southern New England] stock due to its record low abundance and low likelihood of reaching this threshold in the near future.”

Managers’ concessions to the lobster industry, and their failure to take any meaningful action to stem the southern New England stock’s decline has thus put that stock on the path toward collapse.

While all that was going on, Gulf of Maine lobstermen were catching more lobster than ever before, benefitting from an ocean that, while far cooler than that off southern New England, was beginning to warm.

Now, however, there are signs that Gulf of Maine temperatures may be getting a little too high.  The ASMFC notes that

“since 2012, lobster settlement surveys throughout the [Gulf of Maine] have generally been below the time series averages in all areas.  These surveys, which measure trends in the abundance of juvenile lobsters, can be used to track populations and potentially forecast future landings.  Persistent low settlement could foreshadow declines in recruitment and landings.  In the most recent years of the time series, declines in recruitment indices have also been observed.”

That’s how things started in southern New England a couple of decades ago.  But this time the Management Board, apparently having learned the folly of inaction, decided to move quickly, and adopted Addendum XXVII to Amendment 3 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for American Lobster.

Addendum XXVII provides, in part, that the minimum size of Gulf of Maine lobster would increase, and the escape vent sizes in lobster traps used in the Gulf of Maine would also increase,

“based on an observed decline in recruit abundance indices of 35% from the reference level (equal to the three-year average from 2016-2018).”

That decline occurred much more quickly than anyone anticipated.  In October 2023, the Technical Committee determined that once 2022 data was included in the index time series, the recruit abundance index would fall by 39%, when compared to the reference level.  The minimum size would have to change much more quickly than anyone expected.

Because the trigger was tripped so soon, the Management Board decided to delay any change in the minimum size to January 1, 2025, but to lobstermen, who questioned the science that triggered the increased minimum size—a spokesman for the Maine Lobstermen’s Association called it “too precautionary”—and worried that smaller Canadian lobster, some caught right on the Maine/Canada border, would reduce their market share, that was still too soon.

Kristan Porter, president of the Maine Lobstermen’s Association, complained that

“I fish in an area called the gray zone in Downeast Maine.  We share the same area as Canada, so if I am going to have to throw lobsters back that they will still be able to keep, then it’s putting us on an uneven playing field with our neighbor.”

In response to such complaints, Rep. Golden introduced his bill (he will be up for election in November, after all), which would

“block federal funding from being used to implement, administer, or enforce ASMFC’s proposed gauge increase.”

It’s the perfect example of an ill-informed fisheries bill.  

First, it ignores the best available science on Gulf of Maine lobster recruitment, without having any countervailing science at all (as demonstrated in southern New England, fishermen’s assurances that the science is wrong can be very wrong).  If Rep. Golden was truly concerned about the science, he could have taken the path of his colleague, Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME), who successfully urged the Senate appropriators to set aside $2 million in funding

“for Gulf of Maine and Georges Bank American lobster research through Maine Sea Grant…with a focus on ‘stock resilience in the face of environmental changes…’”

and so be sure of his facts before taking legislative action that could harm the lobster—and so his constituents—in the long term.

But it’s also unclear how effective Rep. Golden’s bill would be even if it became law, since the ASMFC’s management actions are binding on the states, not the federal government, and Maine would be legally obligated to enforce the terms of Addendum XXVII or risk having its entire lobster fishery shut down as noncompliant, a result that would certainly be worse for the state’s lobstermen than an increase in the minimum size.

But that’s what happens when legislators get involved in what should be science-based fisheries issues. 

Not only don’t they understand the implications of the science but, too often, they misunderstand the implications of their own actions as well.

 

 

 

 

 

"TRASH FISH" FINALLY GETTING THEIR DUE

 

I fish offshore for tuna.

People who don’t do that too often—or don’t do it at all—might think that it’s always exciting when, after what might have been hours of staring at an empty blue ocean, marked only by the boat’s wake and the splashes and wakes of the lures, a line finally pops away from the outrigger and a rod bends down to the weight of a striking fish.

And yes, that sudden call to action is what we all wait for—except for those times when you realize that no line is rolling off the reel’s spool because a false albacore (more properly, “little tunny”) weighing all of eight or ten pounds just grabbed the trailing lure on a squid bar and, unable to make any headway against nearly 30 pounds of drag, is instead arcing across the entire pattern, going over some lines and under a few more, weaving everything together in a knot that will take at least fifteen minutes to clear.

And the worst thing is, after causing all of that trouble, when you finally drag the miscreant fish to the boat, its meat is so strong and bloody that you can’t even eat it, so you toss it over the side to again wreak havoc on the next tuna boat to troll by.

At least, that’s the way it used to be.  On the offshore scene, at least, false albacore were seen a nuisances that got in the way of the tuna bite, perhaps useful for shark bait but not for much else.

But as light-tackle fishing, and saltwater flyfishing, in particular, began to catch on, false albacore began to gain fans as a strong, fast, sometimes picky fish that pulled hard and were fun to fish for.  Particularly as striped bass and bluefish abundance declined, light tackle guides, who served a clientele more interested in sport than in putting fish in the cooler, relied on false albacore for an increasing part of their business.

Suddenly, the false albacore had economic value, and that economic value earned the fish respect.  People even began caring about its welfare.

The problem was, there was very little information for fishery managers to rely on.  The stock had never been assessed, and no one really knew whether it was accurate to talk about a single false albacore stock, or whether there might be multiple stocks on the U.S. East Coast.  Should light-tackle anglers off Nantucket or Montauk or North Carolina care that a new fishery was starting up down in Florida, that saw fishermen netting and selling false albacore as bait for swordfish and grouper?

More recently, we’ve seen the same sort of thing happen with jack crevalle, another strong, hard-fighting fish that was more-or-less labeled “trash” because of its bloody, strong-tasting meat.

I well recall fishing some backwater along the Lee County (Florida) coast, making cast after cast to the mangroves with only a meager return, when the creek exploded into boiling white water as a school of decent-sized jacks blew up a school of baitfish.  I pointed the breaking fish out to my guide, hoping to he’d get us close enough for a cast, but he said, “They’re just jacks,” and continued to maneuver the boat along the bankside vegetation, trying to give us a shot at speckled trout, snook, or red drum, fish that, on their best day, couldn’t outfight a jack, but were given more respect because people would eat them.

Such traditional disdain for jack crevalle makes little sense.  Well-heeled anglers will spend many thousands of dollars—close to $20,000 for some venues—to catch a giant trevally, but many won’t go 50 yards out of their way to hook up with big jack crevalle.  Granted, the trevally grow about three times as large as the jack crevalle (the International Game Fish Association’s all-tackle record for giant trevally is 160 pounds, 7 ounces, while the all-tackle jack crevalle is just 66-2) but otherwise they’re almost the same fish, both belonging to the genus Caranx and both sharing the same wide-bodied build.

And while it may take days of travel by airplane and boat to reach good giant trevally waters where, if you’re lucky, you might get shots at a few fish each day, anglers along the southeast coast of the United States can often find quality action on big jack crevalle within a few minutes of their docks.  Yet one fish is heralded, the other, too often, disdained.

But, as was the case with false albacore, attitudes seem to be changing.  Guides and their clients are finding jack crevalle to be a relatively abundant, hard-fighting gamefish, qualities that rank high with the many light-tackle anglers who prefer to catch and release challenging sportfish, and don’t care about icing fillets.

As is the case with false albacore, not much is known about jack crevalle.  Like false albacore, it is an unregulated species, there has never been a formal stock assessment, and much of its basic biology—things such as natural mortality rates and migration patterns—remains question marks.

But here, too, there is change, and a lot of the credit for that change goes to the American Saltwater Guides Association, an assemblage of guides, tackle shop owners, other marine businesses, and conservation-minded anglers who understand that healthy and abundant fish stocks are good for business.  Two years ago, they pioneered what they now call “The Albie Project,” a cooperative effort with the New England Aquarium to implant false albacore in the Nantucket Sound area with both acoustic and traditional spaghetti tags, in order to better understand the structure of the stock.

False albacore released near Nantucket have already been detected off North Carolina and Florida, suggesting that the entire East Coast population might constitute a single stock.  Other researchers, unaffiliated with the Association, have also begun to take a more serious look at the species; last October, I took out three Stony Brook University researchers, who managed to deploy four acoustic tags.  Three of those fish were later detected by acoustic arrays, and again confirmed that fish from the northeast, in this case New York, travel as far as Florida.

The single-stock hypothesis found further support in genetic research that is also part of the Albie Project.  Samples were taken from fish caught off Montauk, New York, and also from individuals caught off Massachusetts and North Carolina.  When the lead researcher, Steven Bogdanawicz of Cornell University, commented on the study, he noted,

“Important to remember here that we didn’t set out to determine whether fish from NY/MA/NC were different from each other; rather we’re asking ‘If we take a sample of albies from a pretty broad area at about the same time, how many genetic groups do we see?’  Both softwares [used to analyze the false albacores’ DNA] agree that the answer to that is ‘one.’”

The preliminary data, along with the increasing importance of false albacore to the recreational fishing industry, has led to efforts to provide the fish with some protection from overharvest.  While the Guides Association’s efforts to convince the South Atlantic Fishery Management Council to initiate a fishery management plan for false albacore failed, the Association did convince the Council to have its Mackerel and Cobia Advisory Panel produce fishery performance reports for the species every three years, tracking landings and catch estimates to hopefully determine whether mor formal management might be needed in the future.

In North Carolina, the Guides Association generated enough comment letters to convince the North Carolina Marine Fisheries Commission to adopt basic safeguards for false albacore.  Should landings at any time exceed the five-year average by 200 percent or more, the state will adopt restrictions that will include a 3,500-pound commercial trip limit and a 10-fish individual recreational bag limit, along with a 30-fish recreational boat limit.

Now, the Association is turning its attention to jack crevalle.

In 2023, a paper titled "Rapid approach for assessing an unregulated fishery using a series of data-limited tools” appeared in the American Fisheries Society’s journal, Marine and Coastal Fisheries.  Although it was not a formal assessment of the jack crevalle stock, it used jack crevalle to illustrate an approach to stock assessment.  In doing so, it discovered that

“the Crevalle Jack stock is unmanaged and stock size has continually declined, suggesting that the stock is not being sustainably harvested.  According to the base model [fishing mortality] was above [the fishing mortality rate that would allow harvest at maximum sustainable yield] for 14 of the 22 years since 2000, revealing that overfishing has been occurring regularly since 2000.  Biomass was above [the biomass level needed to produce maximum sustainable yield] from 1950 to 2002 but was below [that level] for every year from 2003 to 2011 and from 2017 to 2021, with [biomass[ being the lowest in 2019.  It appears that high levels of catch above [maximum sustainable yield] starting in 1989 led to overfishing beginning in 2000 and led to the stock becoming overfished in 2003.”

Given such findings, it is important that fishery managers obtain more information about jack crevalle.  In an effort to avert more serious problems, the Guides Association has initiated a tagging program that has guides on Florida’s East Coast implanting spaghetti tags in jack crevalle, in an effort to cast some light on fish distribution, movements, and stock structure.

Thus, former “trash fish” are beginning to get the attention that they deserve, as fishermen, and at least part of the fishing industry, begin to understand that the quality of a fish’s flesh is only one gauge of its value, and that catch-and-release fisheries such as those for false albacore and jack crevalle can generate economic benefits every bit as high, and perhaps even higher, than those emphasizing harvest. 

From there, it is just a short step to understanding that every fish has value, none are mere “trash,” and all should be managed to maintain their abundance at sustainable levels.

 

 

GOVERNEMENT ACCOUNTABILITY OFFICE WEIGHS IN ON BYCATCH

 

Bycatch, defined in the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act as

“fish which are harvested in a fishery, but which are not sold or kept for personal use, and includes economic discards and regulatory discards,”

has long been a problem in commercial and a handful of recreational fisheries. 

Although one of the National Standards for Fishery Conservation and Management created by Magnuson-Stevens states that

“Conservation and management measures shall, to the extent practicable, (A) minimize bycatch and (B) to the extent that bycatch cannot be avoided, minimize the mortality of such bycatch,”

meaningful efforts to reduce bycatch have been few and far between; efforts to do so are generally stymied by the lobbying efforts of industrial-scale fishing industries, which wield significant political influence.

Today, the epicenter of the debate is Alaska, where large trawlers targeting pollock or other groundfish have been accused of killing large numbers of salmon and halibut, at the same time that restrictions on those intentionally targeting such fishes have become more and more onerous.

For the most part, the bycatch debate has flown under the radar of the popular press; it is an issue largely championed by conservation groups and by smaller-scale fishermen who feel victimized by an industrial fleet that is permitted to incidentally kill species of fish now denied, in whole or in part, to fishermen who once directly targeted them and depend on them for their livelihoods.

However, that may be changing.Last month, the United States Government Accountability Office, which was created to be

“an independent, non-partisan agency that works for Congress [and] examines how taxpayer dollars are spent and provides Congress and federal agencies with objective, non-partisan, fact-based information to help the government save money and work more efficiently,”

issued a report titled FEDERAL FISHERIES MANAGEMENT Efforts to Reduce and Monitor Unintentional Catch and Harm Need Better Tracking, and so turned the government spotlight onto the bycatch issue.

The GAO found that

“[The National Marine Fisheries Service’s] efforts to track its performance in reducing and monitoring bycatch do not align with key elements of evidence-based policymaking related to performance management.  Specifically, the agency’s bycatch reduction implementation plan lacks measurable performance goals.  Having an updated plan with measurable goals and a tracking process could help inform agency decision-making.

“Additionally, NMFS has enhanced its database to compile bycatch estimates but does not have a comprehensive written plan for how it will report the estimates.  Developing such a plan could help the agency better monitor bycatch levels, trends, and information gaps, and demonstrate progress over time to internal and external stakeholders.”

To develop the report, the GAO focused on five specific fisheries, selected to include a diversity of fishing areas and fishing gear.  Those fisheries were the Bering Sea pollock trawl fishery, the Gulf of Mexico shrimp trawl fishery, the Hawaii deep-set tuna longline fishery, the New England scallop dredge fishery, and the West Coast groundfish fixed-gear fishery.  No fisheries within the Mid-Atlantic, South Atlantic, or Caribbean regions were examined.

In compiling the report, the GAO noted that bycatch, and bycatch reduction measures, were very specific to a fishery and to the species sought, as well as to the composition of the bycatch that the measures seek to reduce.  Overall, modifications to fishing gear, which allow fishermen to continue to operate while reducing encounters with bycatch species, are preferred over measures that close fishing areas either permanently or for defined periods of time, and so seriously impair fishing operations.  Similarly, the GAO found that measures developed independently of the fishing community, which have or are perceived to have a significant impact on the harvest of target species, will be less acceptable to fishermen, who may not comply with gear modification requirements.

Another issue is the availability of observers, who NMFS considers “essential” if the bycatch issue is to be properly addressed.  Such observers confirm the existence and level of bycatch caught in existing gear, and can monitor the effectiveness of bycatch reduction efforts.  However, observer levels vary from fishery to fishery, and coverage can be anywhere between 0% to 100% of trips made.  The level of funding can depend on a number of factors, including the availability of federal or industry funding, whether protected (i.e. Endangered Species Act-listed or protected under the Marine Mammals Act) species are involved, and the size and geographic scope of the fishery.

The low level of observers present in many fisheries (out of the five fisheries examined by the GAO, there was 100% coverage in the Bering Sea pollock trawl fishery, while coverage in the other four ranged between 2 and 41 percent) can lead to significant uncertainty in the bycatch data.

After speaking with NMFS administrators, scientists, members of regional fishery management councils, and stakeholders, the GAO included four recommendations in its report.  It advised that

“The Assistant Administrator for NMFS should gather information from across the regions to identify any additional resources needed to support fisheries observers, and communicate these needs to relevant stakeholders, including Congress.  (Recommendation 1)

“The Assistant Administrator for NMFS should develop an updated National Bycatch Reduction Strategy Implementation Plan with measurable performance goals tied to specific time frames.  (Recommendation 2)

“The Assistant Administrator for NMFS should develop a process for tracking progress toward the performance goals in the National Bycatch Reduction Strategy Implementation Plan and use the information to guide agency decision-making.  (Recommendation 3)

“The Assistant Administrator for NMFS should develop a comprehensive written plan for reporting on bycatch estimates from the enhanced Fisheries One Stop Shop database, including how the agency will communicate over time on bycatch levels, trends, and information gaps.  (Recommendation 4)”

In a letter dated June 3, 2024, a NMFS representative said that the agency agrees with the GAOs recommendations.

So do we have reason to believe that progress will soon be made on the bycatch issue?

Probably not.  Politics will get in the way.

First, we should note that the report was addressed to, and requested by,

“the Ranking Member Committee on Natural Resources, House of Representatives,”

Raul M. Grijalva.

The Ranking Member of a House committee is the highest-ranking member of the minority party sitting on such committee.  Given the high degree of partisanship in the House, along with the majority party’s general hostility to any legislation that promotes conservation and/or might place any restrictions on business, the likelihood of the report giving birth to changes in federal fisheries law is remote, at best, in 2024; future success would depend on a change in the party controlling the House, with no such change taking place in the Senate or, probably, in the White House. 

Given the current state of electoral politics, that’s not the most likely outcome of the November elections.

Politics will also continue to dominate the bycatch issue in the regional fishery management councils.  Nothing demonstrates that fact better than the delays in 2024 appointments to the Pacific and North Pacific fishery management councils, where conservation-minded nominees are being challenged by the bycatch-prone trawler fleet.  As noted in a recent article appearing in the National Fisherman,

“The State of Washington (WA) nominees by Governor Jay Inslee to both the North Pacific and Pacific Councils are  strong advocates of management policies that prioritize ecosystem protections over ‘optimum yields’ from fisheries extractions, as currently defined in fisheries laws.

“Many fishery stakeholders have long believed that the North Pacific Fishery Management Council (“NPFMC”) ‘family’ has become too top-heavy with large trawl interests who are vested directly or indirectly in the Bering Sea pollock and groundfish fisheries.

“WA holds two of eleven voting seats on the 15-member NPFMC, and both are up for grabs.

“How the Council votes directly impact the Seattle trawl companies’ bottom lines and Inslee’s ‘eco-candidate’ choices for the NPFMC, have prompted a full-court press by powerful Senate trawl lobbyists to sway opinions at US Commerce in Washington, DC…

“Governor Inslee’s choice of one seat on the Pacific Fishery Management Council (“PFMC”) has also raised the hackles of Seattle’s trawl sector…”

Having observed fisheries issues for many years, I suspect that the lobbyists may still prevail, and that the trawlers will get one—or more—of their own on the two regional fishery management councils, which will make effective bycatch reduction that much more difficult to achieve.

Still, it is good to see the issue get some attention.

Although, as we go into an election that will probably put an administration that was demonstrably hostile to fisheries conservation back in power, a little attention and no results may be all that we get for the next four—or more—years.

 

 

FEDERAL COURTS (UNLIKE NEW YORK'S) TAKE FISHERIES OFFENCES SERIOUSLY

 

Last Thursday, a federal judge of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York sentenced a Montauk commercial fisherman, convicted of multiple charges after landing illegal summer flounder ("fluke") and black sea bass on many different occasions, to 30 months in federal prison.

According to the New York Times,

“The man, Chris Winkler, 64, who helms a 45-foot trawler called the New Age, was convicted by a Long Island jury in October on federal charges of hauling too many fish from the sea.  The jury also found him guilty of falsifying records and selling his illegal catch to partners at Gosman’s Dock, a waterfront mall and restaurant complex in Montauk, and to dealers at the Fulton Fish Market in the Bronx…

“Mr. Winkler’s case concerns fishing trips between 2014 and 2017 during which he harvested at least 200,000 pounds of fluke and 20,000 pounds of black sea bass beyond the limit, prosecutors said.  Mr. Winkler then fudged records to conceal the excess catch, they said.

“…Prosecutors said the over-quota fish was worth nearly $900,000 on the wholesale market.”

It was not the first time that federal prosecutors on Long Island came down hard on commercial poachers.  The Times noted that

“The federal government has increasingly used criminal prosecution to enforce fishing regulations, and Mr. Winkler’s case was among several similar cases brought by the Justice Department’s Environment and Natural Resources division in the past decade.  Two such cases, against other Long Island fishermen charged with overfishing fluke, ended with prison sentences.”

Nor is federal fisheries enforcement limited to the commercial sector.  In November 2012, the Justice Department shook up Virginia's salt water angling community when it brought charges against five local charter boat captains who were routinely violating federal law by targeting striped bass in federal waters more than three miles from shore.

At the time, both private and charter boats chronically violated the prohibition on striped bass fishing in the EEZ off Virginia, and the charter boats seemed to feel entitled to do so.  The local fishing website Tidal Fish often featured threads discussing the issue, and when one participant on the site’s chat boards chose to warn others about the regulation back in 2010—about the time when the indicted charter boat operators were committing their violations—he received a hostile and vaguely threatening response:

“Messin with Livelyhoods is Not recommended.. I don’t turn my back to Law Breakers. If I see a Violation Off Water that requires a Call to the Law then I do so.  Out on the Big Pond however holding a Video Camera pointing it at Boats that have Crossed the line.. 1st Not sure how you can Prove where you are on Film, 2nd you have Numbers on your Boat that pretty much identifies you.. All Im saying is Be careful …..Your Messin with things You may Not Comprehend.. It’s a Hard Life making a Living as a Charter Boat Capt.. Don’t make it that Much harder when there are Enforcements out there already… You Ready to be the Star Witness..  Not me Brother..”

Clearly, things had gotten far out of hand.

However, the Justice Department quickly put them back in order, with a substantial assist from the courts, which came down hard on the habitually poaching captains. 

All five were found guilty, and the punishments fit the crimes.

One captain was fined $5,600, plus another $1,900 in restitution payments.  He

“was also sentenced to three years’ probation with special conditions prohibiting [him] from engaging in either the charter or commercial fishing industries, anywhere in the world, in any capacity, during the term of his probation.  [He] is prohibited not only from captaining a vessel, but also rendering any assistance, support, or other services, with or without compensation, for other charter or commercial fishermen.”

Another was sentenced to 30 days’ in jail and 12 months supervised probation, during which time he was not permitted to engage in the charter boat fishery in any capacity.  In addition, he was required to surrender his captain’s license to the Coast Guard, under the condition that he never be reinstated as a licensed captain.

The other three captains received fines, were placed on three years’ probation, and were required to install vessel monitoring systems on any vessel that they might operate during the probation period.

Violating the prohibition on bass fishing in the EEZ no longer seen as merely a risk one took when doing business.  From everything that I’ve heard since, there are far fewer EEZ violations taking place off Virginia these days.

That demonstrates why federal judges who are willing to pass down tough sentences are one of the keys to successful fisheries management.  According to the New York Times, the judge in the Winkler case appreciated the negative impact that poaching has on fish stocks.

“’I consider this a serious crime,’ said Judge Azrack, who called the trial ‘illuminating, educational and disturbing.’  Mr. Winkler, she said, ‘undermined then integrity of the whole fisheries management program.’”

Unfortunately, if the matter had been tried in a state, rather than a federal, court, the outcome would probably have been very different.  It is extremely likely that the poacher would have escaped with a trivial fine that could easily be written off as just another cost of doing business, for most of New York's state and local judges, unlike Judge Azrack, seem to consider fisheries violations as of no meaningful importanc.  It is a situation that continues to frustrate the Department of Environmental Conservation’s law enforcement officers.

Take, for example, a situation that I reported on a little over two years ago.

It seems that, on November 7, 2021, the crew of a DEC police boat

“observed a vessel in the Atlantic Ocean south of Montauk.  On board, 2 persons were hauling up a gill net, both commercially permitted fishermen.  On board, in a cooler, were 11 tagged striped bass, all using allocation tags issued to another fisherman, who was not on board.  They had, also, and additional 82 unused striped bass tags.  An additional 5 untagged striped bass were found, hidden, on board, which were all under the 26” minimum size for commercially harvested striped bass.

“The captain admitted that he was out of striped bass tags for the year, and knew that it was illegal to fish using someone else’s tags…The fishermen were each charged with a misdemeanor, for the illegal commercialization of fish, plus a separate violation for possessing undersized fish and illegal use of tags.  In total, each fisherman faced penalties of up to $800 for the 16 illegal fish and an additional penalty of $5,000, based on the current market value of the fish.  The current market value for the fish illegally aboard the vessel was $388.02.”

While such violation might not have been in the same league as illegally taking 200,000 pounds of summer flounder and 20,000 pounds of black sea bass, it was still a misdemeanor-level transgression, committed by fishermen who admitted that they knew very well that they would be engaged in illegal activity even before they set out for the day.  Yet in this case, the punishment definitely did not fit the crime.

Instead of facing fines that might have deterred future illegal activities—fines at least greater than the value of the illegal fish they had landed—it turned out that

“On 1/5, in East Hampton Town Court, the captain pled to a violation, with a $100 fine and $75 surcharge; all other charges were dismissed.”

Having to pay just $175—less than half the value of the illegally-take fish—with no other penalties imposed, is hardly a deterrent to either the captain who poached the fish or to anyone following the outcome of the matter.  Such fines really are just a cost of doing business to those involved.

Of course, over the years, East Hampton Town Court has proven to be a poacher’s paradise, allowing those taking illegal fish to escape with a slap on the wrist.  That’s the sort of thing that happens when poachers are part of the fabric of the local community that elects the town justices and is home to the attorney prosecuting the crimes.

Still, the state courts rarely provide better results.  Many judges view fisheries violations as minor issues compared to the larcenies, assaults, rapes, and murders that they deal with on a regular basis, and are all too fast to let poachers go home essentially unpunished; similarly, members of the district attorneys’ staffs always have more work than they do time, and so have a tendency to put fisheries violations at or near the bottom of their priority lists.

It's an unfortunate situation, and one that makes it extremely difficult to properly enforce, and build respect for, state fisheries laws.

Yet the federal courts, including those here on Long Island, have already blazed a trail toward effective fisheries enforcement.  It is now up to New York’s courts and New York’s prosecutors to follow the path that they’ve made.

STRIPED BASS: TO REBUILD THE RIGHT WAY, AND ON TIME

 

When the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s Atlantic Striped Bass Management Board meets in October, one thing will be foremost in everyone’s mind—the results of the latest stock assessment update, which will be released ahead of the meeting.

If the update finds that there is at least a 50% probability that the striped bass stock will rebuild by 2029, without any additional management measures being taken, everyone will breathe a little easier and move on to the next item of business.  But if the assessment finds that the stock is unlikely to rebuild by that deadline, the Management Board will face a politically difficult decision.  It will have to decide how to further restrict striped bass fishing mortality, in order to allow timely rebuilding to occur.

A lot of that will depend on how much damage the 2022 spike in recreational landings impaired the recovery, and how successful the emergency measure adopted in May 2023 was in reducing fishing mortality and putting the recovery back on track (since 2023 will be the assessment update’s terminal year, the impacts of Addendum II to Amendment 7 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Atlantic Striped Bass, adopted last January, will not be reflected in its findings).

The last stock assessment, which considered the health of the stock at the end of 2021, predicted that the stock would very probably be rebuilt by the 2029 deadline, but excessive recreational landings in 2022 quickly changed that forecast.  Marine Recreational Information Program landings data suggests that, as a result of the emergency measure, 2023 recreational landings were about halfway between 2021 and 2022 levels (we’ll get a better understanding of that at the August Management Board meeting).

So, realistically, additional action will probably be needed to rebuild the stock on time.

The big question is what those additional management measures will look like.  In that regard, the Management Board will have to make two big decisions.  One is the form such measures will take.  The other is how such measures will be adopted.

Typically, when new management measures are proposed, the Management Board will ask the Plan Development Team to put together a draft addendum, containing multiple management options, which will be sent out for public comment.  Public hearings are held and, informed by the comments received, the Management Board will finalize the management document.  However, the Management Board will have another option to choose from in October.

Addendum II provides that

“If an upcoming stock assessment prior to the rebuilding deadline (currently 2029) indicates that the stock is not projected to rebuild by 2029 with a probability greater than or equal to 50%, the Board could respond via Board action where the Board could change management measures by voting to pass a motion at a Board meeting instead of developing an addendum or amendment (and different from the emergency action process).  [emphasis added]”

Thus, the Management Board could, if it chose to, adopt new management measures at the October meeting, or at a subsequent meeting (perhaps a special meeting called for solely that purpose).  By fast-tracking the new management measures, the Board could have them in place for the 2025 season, thus eliminating some of the debate that swirled around Amendment II, which was not adopted until after some states had already issued commercial tags.  Getting the new management measures in place for 2025 will also make it more likely that the bass will be rebuilt on time; engaging in the full addendum process would probably see new measures adopted in 2026, allowing landings to remain too high for an additional year, and reducing the chances of a timely recovery.

On the other hand, there will certainly be those on the Management Board who will seek delay, trying to eke out another year of higher landings for their commercial and for-hire fleets.  They will argue that action should not be taken before stakeholders have a full opportunity to provide comments on the proposed management measures, using a feigned concern for stakeholder input—feigned because, after multiple rounds of comment on Amendment 7, the emergency action, and Addendum II, there is little doubt where the various stakeholders stand—to maintain excessive levels of harvest for at least an additional year.

Having said that, there is one reason that stakeholder comment—both past and present—may turn out to be very important, and that is the Management Board’s apparent obsession with reducing recreational release mortality.

To put things in the simplest terms possible, the key to rebuilding striped bass—or any other fish stock—is to get to a place where the number of new fish entering the stock (“recruitment”) is greater than the total mortality experienced by such stock.  It’s not much different than your personal checking account:  If your deposits exceed your withdrawals, your balance grows; if withdrawals exceed deposits, it’s not too long before your checks start to bounce.

So lowering total mortality is a good thing.

Total mortality—often represented by the symbol “Z”—has two components, fishing  mortality (“F”), which is just what it sounds like, fish removed from the stock by fishing activities, and natural mortality ("M”), which are removals due to natural processes such as disease, predation, etc.  Unfortunately, there is usually little that managers can do to reduce natural mortality, so when total mortality is too high, the answer is always to somehow reduce F.

Fishing mortality also has two components, one being landings, and the other deemed “discard mortality” (commercial) or “release mortality” (recreational).  Some  make no distinction between commercial discards and recreational releases, listing them both under the catch-all of “discards,” but that is a very critical mistake, because it ignores the dual nature of recreational fishing.

Some recreational fishermen fish, to a greater or lesser degree, for food.  They plan to bring their catch home.  And some recreational fishermen fish—as the term “recreational fisherman” suggests,”--primarily for recreation, and release most or all of their catch.  The great majority of anglers fall somewhere in-between, keeping some fish, and releasing others, depending on their needs, their mood, and the fish involved.

Fishing for food obviously kills fish, but catch-and-release kills some fish, too; it is not a bloodless sport. 

In what might be deemed recreational “food” fisheries, harvest makes up the biggest component of fishing mortality.  In the summer flounder fishery, for example, the average recreational catch for the years 2020 through 2022 was 11.06 million pounds; that total included 8.51 million pounds of fish landed, and 2.55 million pounds of fish that died after being released.

But sport fisheries display a very different pattern.  Atlantic tarpon in the South Atlantic region may be the most extreme example, with 2023 data showing zero fish landed, and 133,264 fish released.  

Clearly, sport fishermen don’t have to kill fish to have a successful day, yet some of those 133,000 tarpon undoubtedly died from the effects of being caught.  Based on one Florida study, which estimated a release mortality rate of somewhere between 7.3 and 17.1 percent, as many as 22,788 tarpon might have been killed by anglers last year.  Yet such losses are accepted as the inevitable result of a catch-and-release fishery, even though release mortality accounts for 100 percent of all fishing mortality.

Striped bass fall somewhat in-between.  

Many striped bass anglers see the bass as a sport fish, and rarely if ever take one home.  The ASMFC estimates that about 90 percent of the bass caught are released, and also estimates that about 9 percent of the released bass die after being caught.  Other fishermen like to take striped bass home and, of course, 100 percent of those fish fail to survive.  

In 2023, recreational fishermen in New England and the mid-Atlantic landed slightly over 2.6 million striped bass, while releasing about 26 million; if we apply the presumed 9% release mortality rate, about 2.34 million of those released fish subsequently died, meaning that, in 2023, release mortality accounted for about 47 percent of all fishing mortality.  In other years, it accounted for a few percentage points more.

Yet it appears that, should the Management Board decide to adopt additional management measures, they’re going to concentrate on less than half of the fishing mortality picture—recreational releases—rather than on the whole of the issue.

The Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries recently issued a press release in which it noted,

“If action is needed, the Board has signaled that it will be focusing, at least in part, on recreational release mortality.”

If anyone has their finger on the pulse of the Management Board, it is Massachusetts DMP, which has been at the forefront of the striped bass debate for the past five years or so.  And if anyone had any doubt about the Board’s fixation on striped bass release mortality, the first item on the agenda for its August meeting calls for it to

“Consider Initial Recommendations from Recreational Release Mortality Work Group.”

It will be a couple of weeks before we know what those initial recommendations will be, but in truth, there aren’t too many options.  It can try to adopt gear restrictions, mandating things like prohibiting the use of treble hooks in lures, or perhaps allowing only a single hook (which might be a treble) on plugs, and perhaps banning the use of bait in the striped bass fishery.  All of those suggestions would find some support in the preliminary findings of the ongoing Massachusetts release mortality study.

The Management Board could also attempt to regulate angler behavior, perhaps by requiring that all bass over a certain size—say, 35 or 40 inches—be released without being removed from the water.  Florida has long had a similar rule in place for tarpon, and they believe that it is doing some good.

The problem is that the benefits of any of those rules are very difficult to quantify.  No model existing today can tell managers, with anything like an acceptable degree of certainty, how much they might reduce release mortality by outlawing the use of bait, or mandating single hooks.  

Such rules are also practically unenforceable.  Should they be imposed, an angler caught casting out a fresh chunk of bunker or a plug armed with three sets of trebles can easily say, “I’m fishing for bluefish,” and it would be impossible for law enforcement to prove that such wasn’t the case.

Thus, while all such initiatives would seem worthwhile, managers won’t be able to prove that they would lead to a reduction in fishing mortality.

Given Addendum II’s narrow slot limit and single-fish bag, if the stock assessment update tells managers that they must further reduce recreational fishing mortality in order to timely rebuild the stock, they have only one effective tool left in their toolbox, and that’s to adopt closed seasons.  And that’s where the Board’s fixation with release mortality rubs up against the harsh realities of human behavior and enforcing fisheries laws.

Closing the striped bass fishery to harvest for some defined length of time would certainly cut recreational fishing mortality.  The magnitude of the reduction could be predicted with reasonable precision, based on the length of the closure.  But that’s where the rub comes in:  While a no-harvest closure would reduce recreational landings, it arguably do nothing to reduce recreational releases, and so release mortality (I actually disagree with that conclusion, believing that some “meat fishermen” would choose not to spend time, money, and effort fishing for bass that they couldn’t legally take home, and that release mortality would decline as a result).

The only way that the Management Board might theoretically reduce release mortality is to prohibit anglers from even targeting striped bass during some specified period.  Again, such a closure would clearly reduce striped bass landings, because if anglers can’t target them, they can’t bring them home.  However, whether it would significantly reduce release mortality is not at all clear, because one thing that fisheries scientists have not yet been able to model is regulations’ impact on anglers’ behavior.

As with the case of anglers who would, if faced with a gear prohibition, continue to target striped bass with outlawed bait and plugs while claiming to target something else, plenty of anglers would probably continue to target bass during a no-targeting season, and just claim to be fishing for bluefish, weakfish, or maybe red drum.  And other anglers, who perhaps really were fishing for blues, weaks, or redfish, would accidentally hook and subsequently release plenty of striped bass, because when different species live in the same places and eat the same things, they’re all going to be a part of an angler’s catch.

So the benefits of a no-targeting closure, as opposed to a no-harvest season, are not at all clear.

Still, there will be members of the Management Board who will support a no-target season out of a twisted sense of “fairness,” arguing that, if catch-and-kill anglers’ hopes of taking fish home are frustrated for a while, catch-and-release anglers shouldn’t be allowed to enjoy fishing, either.  It makes little sense, and would unnecessarily reduce the social and economic benefits gleaned from the recreational striped bass fishery, but some Management Board members are ideologically driven, and to them, the “fairness” claims will ring true.

Hopefully, a majority of the Board will feel differently, but once the initial recommendations of the work group are made public, which should occur about two weeks from now, we will need to take a good look at them, and begin to let our representatives on the Management Board know how we feel.

While adopting an unenforceable no-target closure would be a big mistake, it’s not the worst thing that the Management Board might do in October.

It could choose to do nothing at all.

Anglers concerned with the future of the striped bass should go back to the section of Addendum II that I quoted above, the section that empowers the Management Board to change the plan by a simple Board vote, and note one seemingly innocent parenthetical, the one that says “the rebuilding deadline (currently 2029)  [emphasis added]”

Maybe I worry too much, but I can’t help but think that the “currently 2029” language was added because someone in considering the possibility that, if rebuilding by 2029 looks a little too hard, the Management Board might just want to extend the deadline out a few years, although such extension would be contrary to the explicit provisions the management plan.

Yet history tells us that the Management Board has delayed taking action before.

I can easily argue that its November 2011 decision not to cut harvest, in the face of a stock assessment update predicting that the stock would become overfished within six years if nothing was done, was the first in a series of bad decisions that put the stock in the depleted state that it finds itself in today.  I can also argue that, when it followed the advice of then-Fishery Management Plan Coordinator Michael Waine, and so failed to follow the clear dictates of the management plan, which required it to initiate a rebuilding plan at that point, it lost its last, best chance to prevent a serious stock decline.

I hate to think that the Management Board might not have learned those lessons from its past.  In recent years—really, since the Amendment 7 process began—it seems to have grown more responsible, and more responsive to the needs of the striped bass stock and the advice provided by the great majority of stakeholders.

It would be a shame if the Board began to regress.

The Management Board must rebuild the striped bass stock by 2029, within the 10-year timeframe provided in the management plan.

But at the same time, it must do the job right, and not rely on unenforceable, unquantifiable, unjustifiable actions such as no-target closures, that might make some people feel good, but won’t do much to help the striped bass.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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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