the current fisherman mag..
 

any one read it this week? Zach harvey's Fluke management piece is awesome. While i am not a fluke guy, its obvious there is a lot of waste in the comercial fishery.. Why do the fisheries managers not get this simple logic of 'smart' fishing???

also, I noticed a new writer who wrote an excellent scouting piece :D

its not just the fluke industry. read the national geographic article from april on commercial fisheries. its def an eye opener for anyone thats had them closed for the last twenty years...

havent read that one.. but come on.. why throw good dead fish overboard when the fishery is in trouble?? I want my kid to be abe to catch something he can keep and eat when he's my age :doh:

believe me i totally agree. im almost twenty and according to that national geographic article, the fisheries will be functional extinct by the year 2049. granted ill be old and brittle by then (maybe not ;) ) but there def needs to be a change and people cant just put a dollar sign on their catch.

I think that was the issue with an article about new rubber eel imitations? Missed the boat on that one, Surf Hogs rule :humpty:

Extinct Fish?
 

Go back a few issues in The Fisherman and check out the article on bogus fisheries science. The folks who are screaming that all the fish will be extinct in another 50 years are being funded by environmental organizations. Organizations bent on stopping locking up public resources. I am all for conservation, but false science or science with an agenda is wrong. Plan on fighting for the right to fish if these guys persuade the public that the oceans will be empty in 50 years. They just want to lock it up and look at it. It's already happening on the west coast.

u could be absolutely correct woody, but the national geographic is usually not that far off from the truth. they have a huge reputation to uphold. check out the article if u get a chance. pictures dont lie.

back to the past
 

when that happens here ....
the solution will be flaming arrows.http://i25.photobucket.com/albums/c6...nob1/arrow.jpg

I have not always agreed with everything Zach Harvey writes about but that Fluke article was right on. I am a fluke guy and have enjoyed fishing that species in 5 states since the age of 3, in bays and offshore. It is probably one of the most popular species fished for in the east...and it is not just fluke that get abused like this. IMO NOTHING should be wasted or dumped over the side dead...EVER for ANY reason. If you drag just about anything you pull up will be near dead or die soon after. The discard because of regulations is a very significant mortality number that is being ignored. It should come to market and come off the quota...after all they are dead. Same goes for bass and everything else that swims. Remember the herring draggers catching and dumping bass offshore? This should never happen.

He didn't mention this but IMO the reason they don't do this is that there other factions of the comm industry would be pissed off. Ie. the R&R anglers don't want to see the quota lowered (or even reduced to zero) by draggers retained discard and put them out of work. IMO this is the real hidden issue that they don't want to discuss in the open.

As a recreational angler I actually try very hard not to waste any fish or part of fish. If it is not released, it is kept for food. We don't keep more then we can eat. After cleaning, all the fish waste also gets used as bait for lobster traps or ground up for chum. Nothing (OK, very very little) goes into the dumpster.

Its almost like a slap in the rec anglers face to see deckhands shoveling discard overboard when the rec angler is taking the time to revive a fish and see that he swims off strong.

He made some good points about rec regs as well. But the bottom line is that our fisheries management system is just not working and lacks common sense.

As Ted Nugent tell his kids on his hunting show..."If you kill it, the least you can do is Eat it!"

I am glad they made that a cover story...

hand liners in canada
 

i watched the history of the Canadian hand liners and their similar battles with the draggers and the story was truly sad as one guy forced into not being able to fish like his last 3 generations before him did drove him to suicide. As a fishing village they lost ...

Very complicated issue, but first off realize that the fluke fishery is NOT in trouble. There are more fluke around right now than at any time since they started to keep records.

As far as that soecific incident goes, those fluke were dumped for one of two reasons, either the boat did not have a fluke permit or the state of MA had a very restrictive trip limit. Either way, it's not the fault of the feds or the ASMFC.

Every state that I know of uses trip limits to try and control the commercial landings against that state's quota. It is a well known fact in fisheries management that trip limits cause regulatory discards, yet the states continue to use them, becuase they have no other effective way of limiting the landings. Anyone have another suggestion?

It's too bad the scientific community is not beyond reproach....

Trip limits or not, these draggers are only interested in big fish. When jumbos are paying $4 a pound and mediums (the smallest that can be kept) are paying $1.75, it seems a lot more jumbos and large hit the dock than mediums. When the daily limit goes down to 100 or 75 or 50 pounds a day, all of a sudden only joes seem to find there way into the net.:shocked: :confused: :smash: Hmmmm.........

Yeah that article in NG was very well put together. Especially the section on tuna!

Great info guys - I liked the article - OK, didn't like it because it is not a warm & fuzzy topic - what I mean is it raised some very good points.. On a side note, this is the first Fisherman I've bought in at least 2 years.

Great article on April Scouting too! Where do we find authors like that :hee:

Tom,
what would you do when the trip limit is 50 pounds and you have 150 pounds of fish on the deck? Only keep the 14 inchers? We need to find a better way to limit/monitor the catch, trip limits always produce regulatory discards.

Tell that to all us that fish Lucas area!! We have to get 17 1/2 fish and only 5 fish! It gets worse for the recreational fisherman every year!! While the Commercials continue to rape the sea!!

Takes hours to weed thur the small rats, that I release alive!!

Use to go there just a few years ago and get all you want in just a few min. and all good sizes!

Go to the fish house in NB and watch the dragger's unload 300 pounds of Jumbo's!! What the net missed all the 14" fish I have been catching all day right next to them??

Not to start with you, Thats not my intention!

But the Fluke are in trouble and so is any other inshore fishery as long as the system allows dragger's to fish the inshore water ways!!

And again this is why I will never buy a saltwater lic!

Bitch to the MA authorities, AFAIK MA is the only state that has high enough trip limits to make it worthwhile for the draggers to target fluke during the summer. All the other states have 50 or 100 pound limits so that most draggers won't untie the dock lines..

There is no doubt that with relatively low trip limits a lot of high grading goes on. How can we stop it? If you're fishing in an area where the dragger are working, its no wonder you don't see the tremendous increase in the fluke numbers!

Bogus picture?
 

This is from another board...
I just received an email from a well respected colleague of mine on the MAFMC who is a commercial fisherman from North Carolina. It clarifies many of the issues we have been discussing here:

" I have just spoken with Capt. Rodney Avila to confirm the fact that Massachussetts trip limit was indeed 100 lbs of Fluke. The tow pictured in the April26, 2007 "Fisherman Article" was landed legally in Virginia where the trip limit was 12, 500 lbs. Please distribute accordingly. Thank You....Jimmy"......Gene

who cares where the picture came from? This problem has been and will continue to happen unless things change.

So how do you suggest we change it?

MM:
You made a good point re: trip limits. I think it is the easiest way to manage but far from the best. I think changes need to be made to reduce this, but how remains the question. I do think they should have exceptions to let them land more and have it count against the quota, but that will upset a lot of people.

Other Maco:
IF the fisheries is being managed properly (and we can argue it isnt, but if it is) why do you have more right to fish inside of 3 miles than the comm's? I'm asking as rec. angler. If it is being properly, and legally, they have the right too. Thats not to say I get annoyed when I want to fish where someone is working, but the trick is to find fluke spots where they CANT drag ;)

As far as the Nat'l Geo article. they have a reputation, but they are not a peer reviewed unreproachable (to use Joe's word) reference. Their job is to sell issues first, sell topics second. I think the article has a lot of merit of truth, in the way that Inconvenient truth does; it shed light but I think in a alarmist way.

I think some money needs to be found (never easy) and then put into research for selective otter trawls. We need to reduce bycatch--this is not new. We need to make trawls size selective and species selective. If we can put excluders in the belly sections of the trawls, just before the cod-end then that would help. The problem is--where is the money to do this, and, the fisherman, ain't going to be happy. Two boats down in Point Judith are already trying this out (part of research project) and the results have been encouraging. Encouraging because many smaller species don't make it into the cod end. The fisherman could end up liking them because it means less time on deck for money. Fisherman, however, will always be skeptical about gear modifications when they see half their catch going out a "trap door".
If we cannot make the trawls species selective (and I'm not sure if we can because of money and how slow things move without it), then I think we are going to keep traveling in the same old direction. A little management here, a little management there. In New England the whole fishery thing happens at too slow a pace. If there's a problem people need to get on it, put in restrictions and start upsetting people. It is too pro-fisherman around here and not enough pro-resource. Maybe with us being Yankees and us being steeped in history has made things difficult; but whatever it is, I think it is too slow of a process.
When did Amendment 4--or whatever it was--for ground fish begin, around 1992? Look at the ground fish situation now: is it any better?
Maybe: reduce the fleet size, individual quotas, VERY HIGH fishery fines. Man, who knows?

John:
IFQ's may be the way to go. as much as people don't want to hear it. And I agree whole-heartedly on the fines... when a certain poacher got busted w/ a mess of illegal blackfish bound for the live market he should have had his boat seized, instead of a wrist slap and back at it the next day.

Beutel et al have been doing a lot of that gear work, and I agree results are encouraging.

In my lifetime (50 years) I have seen swordfish disappear from Nomans, school tuna disappear from the Hooter, codfish disappear from SW shoal and Middleground, pollack disappear from Gay Head, white marlin disappear from the star, big bass disappear from the beach, menhaden disappear from Buzzards Bay, weakfish disappear from the harbors, and winter flounder disappear from the estuaries. ANYONE who defends the system that lead to this is below contempt.

giving "limited entry" a try would def not hurt. its somethin that the alaskan halibut fishery has been doing for several years now and i think that the commercial fishery on the east coast should def consider it. unfortunately, it would def put some of the guys that have been in the business out of work and this is nothing that anyone wants to see, but if the fisheries business wants to remain for the next century, we need to do somethin now. a limited entry gives a certain number of fishmen, usually the ones that have been in the business the longest, a percent share. after 100% of the share for a certain fishery is alloted, no new people can enter that fishery unless a portion of the share is given to them or sold to them. the people with the highest shares are allowed to bring in the most, but there is still a quota on just how much they can bring in. this not only reduces the number of fleets out commercially fishing, but also helps reduce the number of reproductive fish caught thus allowing them to rebound yearly. def. somethin that should be thought of if we want to make changes.

Zach's suggestions are exactly what i would suggest, thus why i mentioned his article.

This is extremely significant and journalistic integrity is on the line, so these comments must not be thrown out carelessly. The Fisherman is using that cover photo as proof of mismanagement of the resource and the photo is being used as the evidence behind the assumptions and conclusions in the article. If in fact the fish in the photo were legally sold, most were counted against the commercial quota and that is contrary to what was stated in Zach's article.

Zulu Hotel ?? are you out there? and can you provide more information about this photo?

What you propose is NOT limited entry, its called IFQs or individual fishing quotas. We laready have limited entry on virtually every fishery on the east coast, where no new permits are issued and only boats or indiviuals who qualified over a certain time period can get permits to fish.

I have a problem with IFQs for several reasons. 1st its giving away a public resource to benefit private users. The fish belong to all of us, and we spend a lot of our tax dollars to manage those fish. Why should we just give the resource away, and gaive the fisherman that qualify an windfall profit when they decide to retire and sell their quotas? 2nd, it been proven in the north pacific fisheries, that have used this system for some time now, that IFQs, over time, concentrate the fishery into large businesses/boats and squeeze out the small fishermen we are trying to protect. Its simple economics, which I'll get into if you like. 3rd it sets a very IMHO bad precedent for recreational fisheries. If it was extended to recreational fisheries, you'll get tags for 4 stripers, 10 fluke, 100 scup etc. when you get your (soon to be) license. Catch those fish and you're done for the season. There is no "history" for recreational fishermen, so the gove't will just divide the quota by the number of licensed anglers and that will be that. The avid fishermen will have severe limits placed on him while the casual fisherman won't use up his tags. Either way not a good scenario.

There has got to be another way, I wish I knew what it is.

i just proposed an idea, not a strategy that i said would work all around. i know what the flaws are. i too wish i had the "perfect" idea that pleased everyone, but lets face it. someones not gonna be happy when new regulations come out. either the commercial guys will be mad that they cant put food on the table or citizens that have to put another cent on every dollar towards fishing will become infuriated. like u said, i wish i knew a way to solve a problem that affects my generation far more than ures.

Don't throw out the baby with the bath water
 

Ed B---hope you don't mind, but I've posted a personal response here, to clear the rapidly clouding waters

Hi Ed,

I don't want to talk out of school, but when I initially received that photo, it was in an e-mail that identified the specifics of that tow as having taken place outside the Nantucket Lightship, and bore a caption to the effect of "5000 pound tow. 100 pound trip limit. What a waste." Then, it went on to mention that that it took one of his boats three tows to land a VA limit.

I do believe that those fish were, in fact, subsequently landed in Virginia, where the trip limit was 12,000 pounds. This is a fairly common practice for boats that have the correct state landings permits.

Mr. Avila, against whom I have nothing, was initially trying to prove a point. I admire his courage for trying to make that point, namely that under trip limits, there's huge potential for waste. Now that this issue has caused an uproar, I suspect he's back-peddling a bit, maybe casting a slightly different light on the photo. I've called him countless times, but have not been able to get direct comments from him. Given the feedback he must be getting from guys in the industry, I can't say I would blame him.

We will be addressing this topic in next week's conservation watch.

I do not believe that the photo is in fact a "smoking gun" for fluke waste, but I would in no way change a word I said about the failure of management. Major problem with this piece was that 100-percent of people saw the photo, 10-percent read the article. A lot of the commercial drum-beating on some forums is based largely on hearsay. My point stands. This stuff happens constantly--I've heard about it from draggerman friends of mine for more than a decade. If Mr. Avila's vessel lacked a VA landing permit--many draggers DO NOT hold such permits--those fish would have been run over the side.

Any draggerman worth his salt knows this goes on, when a groundfish boat hits an unexpected pop of cod when the trip limit's down, but who would want to publicly admit that? I have numerous sources in the commercial industry, and in fact spent some time in various commercial fisheries (including gillnetting, where I saw this problem firsthand and repeatedly) and have heard most of them lament this situation for the last 10 years. I'm not surprised, though, that no dragger owner or captain is coming forward with the smoking gun.

I will clarify details on the photo, but I will not budge on my argument. When draggermen start paying attention to the Fisherman, I rest assured that I've struck a nerve, that, as the saying goes, "the truth hurts."

Thanks for your response, and stay tuned.

Best,

Zach Harvey

Zach,
But the same thing could have easily happened even with IFQs, no? You said they were fishing for yellowtail, so it's entirely possible that if they had IFQs fo fluke they would have already filled them, and still had to dump the fish.

I don't know what the cure is for the wasted fish, but I'd love to hear anyone's ideas on how this kind of waste can be avoided.

Actually, Mike, if fluke were landed as bycatch in another fishery, it could still presumably be landed against the vessel's fluke quota. Point is, IFQs (ITQs, LAPs, whatever you want to call them) represent a major philosophical shift in the way species are managed. Because that's not what managers are currently using here on the East Coast, I've no idea all of the specifics of such a theoretical change.

I offered this up based on a great deal of personal observation, tons of anecdotal info, etc. It may not be the way things pan out, but from where I sit, you can't get much worse than the current system.

It's time for a huge change, and you have to start somewhere.

My argument was not so much that IFQs are the only way to go--I do think that system would curb waste significantly, and it's waste that is the number-one problem under the current regulatory philosophy--but rather that some common sense needs to be injected back into a scientific bureaucracy that moves pretty @#$%^ slowly when new ideas don't fall in line with the current model.

Anyone has great ideas, I'd love to hear about them.

ZH

Zach,
I offered up my views of IFQs on the first page of this thread, suffice it to say here that there are pros and cons, and right now in my mind the cons outweigh the pros. But as a memeber of the ASMFC and MAFMC advisory panel on Scup, sea bass and fluke, I'd love to hear new ideas of how to reduce the waste, i.e. regulatory discards. We just started the process of developing a new amendment the the fishery management plans for all three species, so any good ideas would be very timely.

Numbskull hits it right on the head ... the system has been broken for so long that no one has taken the time to look at history.

Mike:

I think, logistically, it's unlikely that all boats would rush out in the bleak winter months to fill their entire fluke quota for the year. Point is, an IFQ system would would allow fishermen to plan their fishing effort. Smart fishermen would likely work together to space landings out a bit, keeping the price out of the gutter.

No question there would be some degree of waste even in an IFQ system (as in a dragger, towing for cod/ haddock, hitting a pop of fluke in the fall, after fluke quota was filled). That happens NOW. That happens anyway. At least if guys could fill quota as they put it on deck, you'd cut down on the massive, widespread waste that goes on every spring and summer, where guys take a 1000 pounds while towing up a limit of 200. Because limits are per trip, this goes on two, sometimes five trips per day. That's a lot of dead going back over the sides.

I laid out what I thought was a pretty sensible argument, including a caveat that market price be set to remove the incentive to high-grade. You keep asking--here and on every other message board in the Northeast--"Who has a good idea?"

What are all your compelling arguments against what I proposed? Why--barring the BFT seine quota issue--are IFQs so riddled with problems.

Here are a few more ideas, since all I've made to this point apparently missed the mark:

-Rec slot limit for fluke to distribute pressure across a wider segment of the biomass.

-Thin the commercial herd by any means necessary (I do think an IFQ system would help reduce the number of players). Thomcat, if you're still reading this, I would absolutely ask that there be a quota set-aside for rod-and-reel comms, per the cod quota allotment that goes to MA's hook fleet).

-Set price for ALL FLUKE to discourage highgrading.

-Assign quota on a vessel-by-vessel basis to reduce the astronomical waste.

-Put a dis-incentive (like IFQs) on the winter canyon fishery when massive effort is focused of big, breeding fluke.

-To avoid a massive, destructive effort during inshore/ offshore migration periods, subdivide individual quotas.

-Rolling closures during migratory periods, or in areas (i.e. the Sand Bank Channel east of Block Island) to avoid huge pressure on massive aggregations of fish.

Can't think of much else I haven't already said--at least within the realm of something that could be implemented on this planet in the current climate.

You've yet to offer a suggestion, Mike. As a regulator, what do you think?

Best,

ZH

:wave: I'm still here, Zach. As far as comm. rod & reel efforts are concerned this is absolutely the cleanest fishery out there. There is virtually no waste. High-grading is not a factor as the catch is sorted on a fish by fish basis rather than picking through an already dead or dying deck full of fish. Incidental by-catch is dealt with the same way, before the fish is dead. If the issue is the massive waste incured by draggers and gill netters, then those methods should be addressed. To lump the the most destructive methods of harvesting toward both the fish and the fragility of the ocean's floor together with what is far and away the most selective and conservation minded technique is totally unfair. Why do the R&R fishermen, who have the shortest window of opportunity and who generate the least environmental harm have to suffer the hardships and restrictions created by the most wasteful and destructive approaches?

Someone needs to light a fire under your collective a#@es.

Isn't the job of The Fisherman to sell issues first and sell topics second also? :doh:

If you somehow think that fisheries are 'not that bad' then you've got blinders on.

Zach,
1st of all let me point out that I am NOT a regulator. what I am is an interface between the fishermen (all fishermen both commercial and recreational) and the regulators. I represent you before the councils and the commision. That's the reason I'm looking for imput from folks who have solutions to offer but may not have the time to appear at meetings.

As far as my opinions go, I don't like IFQs. They concentrate the fishery into the hands of big player with bog boats and squeeze the little guys out. That's been demonstrated time and again in the Pacific Northwest fisheries that have adopted IFQs.

I would prefer to keep the dragger portion of the commercial fluke fleet on the offshore grounds during the winter and keep the inhores fish during the summer for the hook and line commercials and the recreational fishermen. Draggers create havoc with all of the inshore species and the other fishermen that target them when they are dragging inshore during the warm weather. But I have to keep in mind that the vast majority of the fluke draggers are state licensed boats that can't fish in federal waters. IIRC there are only about 1,500 federally permitted boats in the fluke fishery. So the states are going to have to allow some dragging inshore when the fish are available or put those state licensed boats out of the fluke business.

A slot limit for recreational fluke fishermen is unnecessary and unwaranted. It would dramatically increase the numbers of fish killed by the recreational sector, since there would be a lot more keepers. This would have to translate into draconian bag limits to keep the catch within the quota. A bag limit of one fish a day would be equally unpalatable to private boaters and party/charter operators. Plus it would do nothing for the fish. Fluke begin to breed at about 14-15 inches so cacthing 19 or 20 inch fish does not materially affect the breeding biomass. If an when we reach the target biomass under the rebuilding plan we should see size limits start coming back down as well as possible increases in the bag limits, but until we get there we have to live within the quotas dictated by the rebuilding plan.

There is no way on God's green earth that the government should or will get involved in setting a price for the fish. If they did try to, it would IMHO be an unmitigated disaster. Let the market set the price. Of course that means that jumbos will always pay more than smalls but I don't think hi-grading is all that big a problem. No fisherman in his right mind is going to shovel money over the side in the hopes that the next tow will produce more money. I suspect that the only hi-grading that takes place is at the end of the trip, when they might be over the trip limit and they throw back the smalls and keep the jumbos. Cetainly not so big a problem that we should have the government step into the marketplace with all kinds of unintended consequences should they not get the price right, like huge increases in imported product.


Thinning the "commercial herd" isn't really necessary, as long as we can fish within the quota and reduce the regulatory discards. It really doesn't make a difference if one hundred or one thousand boats fill the quota. But the key is reducing regulatory discards, which are spurred by lots of (state licensed) boats and the resulting low trip limits. But I would note here that there is a fine line in setting trip limits. MA has relatively high trip limits during the summer, high enough to make it worthwhile for a dragger to target fluke. Most of the other states have much lower trip limits, like 50 or 100 pounds, not enough to make it worthwhile for a dragger to untie from the dock. This allows the bycatch from the boats targeting other species. like squid, to be sold and avoids wasting it. Maybe part of the solution to reduce regulatory discards is for states like MA to reduce their trip limts to 50 or 100 pounds. That's not a solution that the MA draggers are going to like and as I write this the RI draggers are doing everything they can to increase their trip limits.

I could go on and on, but I don't have the time right now. If I see you at the RIMFAC meeting next Monday, I'll buy you a beer afterward and we can kick it around some more.

I'm sure Mike has read it, but some of you others should read Doryman's Reflection before jumping on the IFQ bandwagon. They used them years ago and they did a good job helping destroy the industry.