Sunday, September 24, 2023

HOW DO SHARKS RESEMBLE GOLIATH GROUPER?

 

The hot new buzzword in recreational fishery management circles is shark “depredation.”

Over the past few years anglers, particularly in Florida and some of the other southern states, have been whining about sharks stealing and eating hooked fish that anglers’ wanted for their own meals.  Not surprisingly, sharks often target some of the largest fish that find themselves on fishermen’s lines, as those are the fish that fight the hardest and longest, and thus ring the loudest dinner bell for submarine predators, while irritating anglers all the more.

Depredation has been getting a lot of publicity lately, with Rep. Garret Graves (R-LA) inserting language into Rep. Jared Huffman’s (D-CA) Sustaining America’s Fisheries for the Future Act of 2022 that would make

“Projects to better understand shark depredation, what causes increases in the behavior, and how to best address the behavior”

a new priority for the National Marine Fisheries Service.

Rep. Rob Wittman (R-VA), with Rep. Graves as a co-sponsor, went one step further, introducing H.R. 4051, the so-called “SHARKED Act,” a bill intended

“To direct the Secretary of Commerce to establish a task force regarding shark depredation, and for other purposes.”

Even the National Marine Fisheries Service seems to have jumped aboard the shark depredation bandwagon, inserting language into the “guiding principles” for its newly-revised Recreational Fishing Policy that would encourage

“Improving understanding of the impacts of depredation on recreational fisheries.”

I’ve written about the shark depredation issue before, and won’t go any farther down that road today, except to note that of the species most often accused of such depredation two, the sandbar and dusky sharks, remain overfished, with the rebuilding date for the former stock estimated at around 2070 , a considerable while away, while the rebuilding date for the latter is estimated to be sometime between 2084 and 2204, with 2107 the most likely year in that span, meaning that most people reading this post probably won’t see a rebuilt stock in their lifetimes.

Two other alleged depredators, bull and lemon sharks, remain unassessed, and the health of those stocks is unknown.  It seems a situation that calls out for caution.

Still, fishermen complain that

“You can’t bring fish to the boat anymore because once you’re hooked, they’ll eat them,”

claiming, without factual support, that there is

“a small imbalance in our shark population,”

and calling for what is euphemistically deemed “additional management” to “combat the shark population.”

It wasn’t that long ago that we heard fishermen and spearfishermen saying the same thing about Florida’s goliath grouper.

One website, Floridagofishing.com, wrote in 2012,

“There is a big controversy that has erupted with anglers complaining that these giants are reducing the population of sportfish on our reefs due to their voracious feeding habits, and destroying the ecosystem of the reefs.  Anglers are frustrated when they reel in their catch to have it stolen by yet another hungry Goliath.  Once you hook up a giant you have to spend a large amount of energy and to properly reel it in only to turn around and release the unwanted catch.  Anglers want the species population reduced and have suggested opening them up to fishing for a short time annually, possibly in the summer when there are less anglers in the area.  Anglers feel that someday there will be nothing left but Goliaths on our offshore wrecks and reefs which will definitely have an impact on tourism and the local fishing industry.”

Sound familiar?

Just two years ago—September 21, 2021—National Public Radio reported on complaints about goliath grouper depredation, and the need to harvest a few of those then-protected fish in order to reduce the alleged problem.

In its report, NPR described the debate over permitting a limited harvest of goliath grouper, and quoted one spearfisherman, Dick Kempton of the St. Pete Underwater Club, who complained

“You can’t dive a range finder or a wreck in the bay or a channel marker that hasn’t got one, two or three resident giants living there.  They eat everything that comes by.”

The report also quotes biologist Chris Koenig, who has studied the big groupers for over two decades.  Counter to some of the claims that goliaths have grown too abundant, he opines that

“What we see is a population that is just teetering on the edge.”

His wife, biologist Felicia Coleman, shares Dr. Koenig’s long experience with goliath groupers, and has noted that while smaller goliaths were abundant, the number of big fish was in decline, and followed that up by saying,

“When you’re looking at population recovery, the important thing is what is the size of the reproductive population, that is the adults.”

And the adults may not be doing as well as some anglers and spearfishermen claim.

Despite the warnings given by some biologists and other interested parties, Florida ultimately decided to allow some harvest of goliath grouper, although to limit any possible harm, they restricted such harvest to no more than 200 fish per year, established a  24- to 30-inch slot size limit, and required a $150 ($500 for out-of-state anglers) permit to assure that only those seriously interested in harvesting a goliath might do so.

Even with such restrictions, the population of goliath groupers has apparently declined since harvest was again permitted.  According to James Locascio of Florida’s Mote Marine Laboratory, a study conducted at six goliath grouper spawning sites found that, at all but one of such sites, the abundance of adult goliath grouper declined between 2013 and 2022.

Such decline probably cannot be blamed solely on Florida’s decision to allow some goliath grouper harvest, since that is far from the only source of fishing mortality.  Dr. Locascio noted that, according to logbooks provided by commercial fishermen, about 1,700 goliath grouper had been caught and discarded between the years of 2000 and 2020; because such logbooks only represented about 10% of the region’s commercial fishing fleet, the bycatch and dead discards of goliaths during that period could have been substantially higher.

Although adult goliath grouper may not be retained by fishermen, they are nonetheless the target of a substantial recreational catch-and-release fishery, that sees anglers dropping down large baits on heavy bottom fishing gear, in the hope of catching and releasing a fish that might weigh in excess of 500 pounds.  While there are rules governing such fishery which are intended to limit release mortality, it is inevitable in any recreational fishery, particularly those employing live bait, that some of the released fish will not survive the experience.

Although the mortality rate may be relatively low when fish are caught from a boat, where hooks can be easily removed and the weight of the fish is always fully supported by the surrounding water, one of the attractions of goliath grouper is that anglers don’t necessarily need a boat to catch one; like sharks, goliaths are readily available to the angler willing to put in the time and effort to catch one from shore, or from shoreline structure such as piers, bridges and causeways.

Thus, while Florida law prohibits large goliath grouper to be removed from the water, one can often find photos of fish dragged into water far too shallow to support their full weight, fish that will have to be dragged back over the bottom for at least a short distance before they can regain their ability to swim.  Goliaths caught from elevated structures such as piers and bridges remain in deep water, but when the time comes for them to be released, they also remain out of anglers’ reach, meaning that hooks often cannot be removed from their mouths, forcing anglers to cut the leader some distance away from the fish.

Both those practices place additional stress on the fish, and could easily increase the rate of release mortality.

Thus, placed in the overall context of commercial discards and recreational release mortality, Florida’s recreational goliath grouper harvest becomes just one more factor that, when added to all the rest, militates against fully rebuilding the stock.

So the answer to the question, “How does a shark resemble a goliath grouper?” is fairly simple.

Both sharks and goliath groupers include fish in their diets. 

Both are opportunistic predators, and both are more than willing to take the easy route of stealing a fish from an angler’s line rather than chasing one down on their own.

Thus, both get anglers annoyed—so annoyed that anglers are calling on fisheries managers to lower the predators’ numbers, so that people, who come from the land to hunt fish, don’t have to compete with the native ocean predators for what the fishermen see as snapper and grouper and other species that rightfully belong to them.

And, of course, sharks and goliath grouper resemble each other in one more, very important way.  Many shark stocks, like the big grouper, are in tenuous condition, either overfished or on the brink of such depletion, and additional harvest might well push them over the edge.

Of course, that would probably please a large slice of the recreational fishing community, who see both sharks and goliaths as little more than obstacles to filling the fish box, and wouldn’t object if their numbers were thinned.

It seems as if goliath grouper abundance may, once again, be on the decline, but managers can still keep sharks on the road to recovery.

Provided that they don’t yield to complaings about depredation, and so treat them the way that they did the big groupers.

 

 

No comments:

Post a Comment