RIGHT MESSAGE, WRONG REASON

I was thumbing through the pages of Billfish Magazine, the in-house publication of The Billfish Foundation, when a small article caught my eye.

It was titled “Fishing outside the U.S. might bite you upon returning,” explained how international agreements limit U.S. recreational landings of Atlantic marlins (blue and white combined) to just 250 fish, and warned boat owners who hold Highly Migratory Species permits that such limit applies to their catch even when fishing in the waters of another nation or on the high seas.

It further advised that

“If U.S. vessels are responsible for landing more than 250 Atlantic marlin [overseas] or in U.S. waters, all billfishing in U.S. waters and by U.S. vessels, whether in a tournament or not, will be switched to a release format.  If the number significantly exceeds 250, the all-release format could be extended for more than 12 months.”

The piece specifically mentioned fish caught in the Dominican Republic, which made sense because, as noted elsewhere in the magazine, some U.S. sportfishing boats staging out of Dominican ports and fishing around Dominican fish aggregating devices have gotten into conflicts with local commercial fishermen, who view them as competition for the billfish resource.  The U.S. boats have resolved such conflicts by allowing the locals to gaff and retain the sport-caught marlin, which apparently made the Dominican fishermen happy, but created the regulatory issue described above when they ended up killing too many marlin.

Billfish Magazine went on to note that a lot of the marlin caught in such fashion are small, meaning that the U.S. boats may be literally robbing the nursery when they catch the fish and let the locals kill them.

That should be reason enough to stop the practice. 

Conserving white and blue marlin, both of which remain overfished and subject to overfishing, would be another good reason.

But it wasn’t the reason The Billfish Foundation gave.  

Instead, it warned

“BOAT OWNERS:  If you desire to fish “big money” tournaments in U.S. waters, make very clear with your team that landing Atlantic marlin or handing a hooked one off to a local may eliminate your opportunity to win a large tournament purse in the U.S…

“If the big money U.S. tournament purses for the largest Atlantic marlin are important to you, its best to catch, resuscitate, and release each billfish when fishing in other nations’ waters.  Protect your option to win the big purse at home by helping to keep the number of Atlantic marlin landed in all waters to a minimum.”

In other words, don’t release the marlin you catch somewhere else because it’s the right thing to do for the stock.  Don’t do it because it’s probably the only way that your kid or your grandkid might be able to catch their own billfish someday.  Instead, release the marlin you catch off other nations’ shores to preserve your ability to kill marlin over here, so you can show them off at the dock, maybe collect a tournament purse, and leave them to rot in an American dumpster…

Not a very nice message when put it in those words.

Yet I don’t blame The Billfish Foundation for using the language they did.  They’re one of the better organizations out there, dedicated to using the best science available—or paying the tab to develop needed science when it’s not available—and an advocate for better billfish conservation. 

I was a member for about 25 years; not one of the high-roller members that keeps the organization alive, but just one of the minor contributors who might have kept the office air conditioning running for a few hours each year.  I joined out of guilt after I put one of my anglers on a first-place white marlin in a kill tournament back in 1990 (for the record, that fish was eaten, not thrown away), but stuck around because I liked the work that the foundation was doing.  I’m no longer a member because of their support for the Modern Fish Act, but should they ever rethink that position, I’d likely join again.

In issuing their recent warning, I suspect that The Billfish Foundation was just trying to appeal to the mindset of big-boat tournament anglers, and trying to get them to do the right thing.  

I’ve been fishing offshore for many years, and went through my tournament phase; I fully understand the bravado, the sort of “Look at ME!” “Mine is bigger than yours” attitudes that afflict today’s big-boat tournament crowd.

Tell them that their actions are hurting marlin populations, and many will laugh in your face.  Tell them that they might not be able to pose in tournament photos with a dead marlin, their girlfriends and a horde of hungry flies, or collect a big tournament check, and they’ll listen and start getting serious.

And that’s too bad.  But it’s what happens when cash, and not fish, become the center of tournament efforts.

It wasn’t always that way.

In what some call the “Golden Age” of salt water fishing, the years immediately before and after the Second World War, fishing tournaments were all about sportsmanship and big fish, and not about money at all. 

Back then, anglers from as many as 28 different nations would travel to Wedgeport, Nova Scotia, where they competed in the International Tuna Club Match, not for money, but merely to win something called the Alton B. Sharp Cup. 

Here on the northeast coast, the big event was, for many years, the United States Atlantic Tuna Tournament.  As described in a past issue of Power and Motor Yacht magazine,

“In the 1930s, two fishing clubs located roughly 34 miles apart threw down the gauntlet for giant bluefin tuna bragging rights in a two-boat-only event that featured a team from Freeport, New York, and one from Manasquan, New Jersey.  Without giant dock parties and fanfare, captain’s meetings, or beer sponsors, the two teams fished head-to-head and exchanged their catch weights via a landline telephone.  Tournament tuna fishing had begun.

“Getting an invite to compete in the USATT and a chance to catch giants was a highly sought after prize for anglers.”

As one angler quoted in the article said,

“In comparison with today’s tournaments, the USATT was much different.  It wasn’t commercial, we fished for trophies and bragging rights.  No prize money was involved, it was all about honor.”

All about honor.

We could use some of that honor in our fishing these days. 

Then maybe we wouldn’t need lie detectors to test tournament winners.  

We wouldn’t read stories about three-year-long lawsuits brought to contest a $1 million tournament prize, or need a judge to determine that a tournament entrant didn’t really win a $2.8 million purse, because he didn’t follow the tournament’s rules.

I wouldn’t have had to listen to a boat auctioning off a big mako over VHF radio to tournament fishermen here on Long Island.

And The Billfish Foundation wouldn’t have had to make releasing Atlantic marlin all about money, when it’s already the right thing to do.