A Different Point of View

[nightfighter]

I ran into my friend Ray today and our conversation had me thinking much of the day. Ray is a commercial lobsterman/fisherman and one of the more insightful and educated people I know. (I tell him he's an oxymoron)
His view on the striped bass population is that there are as many now as back in the day, but they're killing his livelihood as they prey on lobsters. This is from a ban on commercial netting of SB, AND the collapse of their food sources. He sees large often but noted that they are not fat as in the day. The fact that dogfish are protected drives him, and the tuna fishermen nuts. There are days that most of us would question that dogfish are endangered, I'm sure. He thinks anyone would be hard pressed to find any eels in the Danvers River, once a great source in this neck of the woods. His books reflect that in the past three to four years his lobster catch has fallen off the map. Where it used to be good from June to Dec, it has been dead until October. And when do the bass leave our area?
He said the state has drawn a line from the Cape to Maine, and the area inside, area 15 I think he said, was coming under pressure for less traps and more fishing regs. A friend of his is in the seafood suppy biz with Stavis, and stated that to meet restaurant demand 95% of his SB sold were farm raised. So was our comm. SB season just two weeks long this year? And he went on about the restriction on cod fishing until June (?) which I must have missed.
Am I/we missing something here. Has the ecological cocktail been totally screwed up? What is the true state of the SB population? Should we be taking/killing our daily limit to help the state of the population? If their normal food sources disappear, they will forage for what, lobster? Not unlike the deer hunting, is it? You reduce a herd for the long term betterment. It's not just SB, but eel, herring, dogfish, etc.
I mentioned how many of us practice catch and release. He said he would make me up a shirt with "Catch and Filet"
He brought up valid points and I wanted to share...
Ross