2009 Regs out today
 

Looks like Recs will be fishing with a quota of 1 fish between 27 and 47" and one between 47-73".

General: 3 over 73" until August 31 when things will probably loosen up with either unlimited quota or smaller fish or both.

Looks to me like 1 fish a day as I highly doubt there will be any/many fish smaller than 47 around this year.

I agree, not in the bay or east anyway.

Dont be so sure of that. The southern reports are of 2 distinct year classes. The 67-72" and a smaller 40-50" class. I'm optimistic.

Me too, optimistic that is....

What size to BFT spawn at...
just curious how the regs relate to maturity

I know YFT start at 75cm, (2.5ft fork length)and most are mature around 3-4ft so the min. size of maturity is close to the 27" min size for us to keep...

how does that relate to BFT...

Bluefin tuna don't start to spawn until they are about 300 pounds well above the 73 inch "trophy" size for the angling category. So the answer is that we are killing babies.

Mike,
that was my point, and I thought my brain said 72" way in the back of my head in the land of trivial facts that they were large when they matured..
The Med fishery aside, all this talk of more catching to keep our quota worries me... we all get agitated (or at least I do) that long-liners are killing pre-spawn swords (I don't eat swordfish that I don't know was rod/reel or darted) on how the average size has decreased and such, but the mirror should be our friend here...

the last OTW had a great article with some salient points about BFT's, conservation, specifically regarding how the same year classes have been hammered for the last 5 or 6 years, as they just keep getting bigger, and perhaps less plentiful....

from what I read/understand, most of the yellow fin, albacore and BE landed offshore have at least reached spawning size, or some high percentage has... with BFT it isn't even close...

seems odd to be, b/c every other species is managed based on spawning size... commercial (gen cat) fish this is the case, but for recs they aren't even close to mature....
just wondering if people think about this...

let me say, I have no problem with people killing and eating fish, and I am pointing ZERO fingers here, as anyone keeping them is legally allowed to... but when I see the same rec people posting a number of juvenile fish dead on every trip it makes me wonder, and I always think that is a lot of fish to eat, and maybe we are in a seriously flawed system!

We have a 73 inch minimum for the gen. Cat. but most countries allow the commercialization of much smaller fish. We are the exception in only killing mature fish for the market. The argument for keeping the status quo is that is we don't kill the fish then ICATT will give our quota to other countries who will kill the fish, so either way the fish will be dead. I'm not sure I completely buy into that, but that's the argument.

I understand Mike.
Just think it's ass-backwards...
I just think it's to bad we have to have a kill more mentality to keep up with them, rather than fighting for more international regs (which I know is on-going)

IMHO part of the problem is our membership in ICATT, they govern our quotas but we are powerless to get them to impose the kind of restrictions everyone knows are necessary.

Well said. Plus the policing done by ICCAT is almost non-existent.
I just hope the fish are around for my kids to enjoy.

Almost ????