March on washington Feb. 24th, 2010

[MakoMike]

[QUOTE=numbskull;737096]

Originally Posted by MakoMike

I Again I ask, show me one stock that fishing has driven into deep trouble. QUOTE]

Weakfish
Inshore Cod
Halibut
Striped Bass once and heading there again
Scup
Fluke
Inshore Pollock
Whiting
Swordfish
White Marlin
Bluefin Tuna
Yellowfin Tuna (NE population)
Big Eye Tuna
Winter Flounder
River Herring
Wolffish
Tautog heading there fast S of NE.

You can quibble on a few, but none of those populations are anywhere near where they were 35-40 years ago....except Halibut which got wiped out 80 years ago. But who cares, cause who would be willing to pay you to take them off the Race in March to catch 200 lb fish?

I'm not going to get into a pissing contest over this. But you obviously haven't done any research in compiling the above list as you are wrong for more than half of it. According to the scientists that do the match, the fluke population is at a historic high, never been more fluke around than there are today. So how come we have these ridiculous fluke regs of 4 fish at 20" inches or similar?

[numbskull]

[QUOTE=MakoMike;737294][QUOTE=numbskull;737096]

I'm not going to get into a pissing contest over this. But you obviously haven't done any research in compiling the above list as you are wrong for more than half of it. QUOTE]

So you agree then that the other 1/2 of the list is overfished?
Point made, I think.
You planning any Halibut trips this year, or that income wouldn't be helpful?

[afterhours]

i think ALL fishermen are to blame in the decline of the fisheries that i've been involved in. i've been fishing for 50 yrs and must say that the striper, bluefish, blackfish and winter flounder fisheries are not what they once were, period. just going by the eyeball test....

[scottw]

can't blame just the fishermen....

In round numbers, the various marine mammal species in the northwest Atlantic consume 20,000,000 metric tons of food each year. And at an average 3% annual increase, a fairly conservative estimate, each year the amount of food they consume could increase by more than half a million metric tons.

The total commercial landings for all species (finfish and shellfish) from the U.S. East Coast and Atlantic Canada are 680,000 and 870,000 thousand metric tons respectively. (Canadian Division of Fisheries and Oceans - http://www.qc.dfo-mpo.gc.ca/peches/e...ts/dfo_adm.pdf and National Marine Fisheries Service NMFS Commercial Fishery Landings Data ).



In perspective, in the Northwest Atlantic in 2006, marine mammals ate approximately 13 times as much fish and shellfish as commercial fishermen landed, and the annual increase in their total consumption might well have exceeded the U.S. East Coast landings in 2007.



And what are they eating? In large part, it’s what the fishermen are catching. If a fisherman wants to catch it, there’s an excellent chance that a whale or a dolphin or a seal is going to want to catch it as well. And if a commercial fisherman doesn’t want to catch it, then the probability is that something that he or she wants to catch is going to be eating it.



Consider the most numerous species, harp seals. If cod make up only five percent of their diet (it is reported as “a small percentage”), they consume on the order of 500,000 metric tons of this valuable species every year. At the fishery’s peak, cod landings for the north coast of Newfoundland, which is in the middle of the harp seals’ range, didn’t quite reach 800,000 tons. Capelin, one of the harp seals’ preferred foods, is also a preferred food of cod. This single species could be eating as much cod as Newfoundland’s commercial fishermen were once catching, and are undoubtedly eating far more of the cod’s preferred food, the cod have been declining as the harp seal population has been increasing, and yet overfishing is considered to be the reason for the decline.



In view of the massive levels of marine mammal predation, and remembering that much of it is either on the species that fishermen target or the food of those species, from any rational perspective it seems incredible that our fisheries management systems and our fisheries managers are still exclusively focused on fishing. And we haven’t yet considered the other factors, human-induced and natural, that will be the subject of subsequent Fishnets. But that’s what we’ve done and that’s what we’re doing, and because of the slavish devotion to that view, the concept of Ecosystem Based Management has been distorted into just another iteration of the failed “blame it all on fishing” philosophy.

Getting real about ecosystem based management

the seal population hasn't increased at all on the Cape...has it?

[numbskull]

Absolutely increasing predation (which ASMFC seems to ignore) is an issue. I suspect the poundage numbers are skewed, whales eat a lot of krill and small forage (sand eels/anchovies/etc ) likely constitute most of it.
On the other hand, every available historical record indicates finfish populations (and presumably predator populations as well) where many times more abundant when man (us non-native guys) arrived here than they are now. That makes it pretty hard to sell the argument that fishing is not a major cause of where we are today.

It doesn't matter, however.

People do not like to feel uncomfortable.
Most people do not fish.
Fishing causes some degree of "environmental damage".....meaning depletion of fish.
Damaging the environment makes most people uncomfortable.
Most people are unwilling to be made uncomfortable so we can fish.
Enter Pew trust and fishing restriction legislation stage left.

If we want to continue to be able to fish, we need to minimize (not fight for) our impact on the fish (read environment). We are on VERY thin ice if we don't, and there are far too many of us on that ice for it to hold.

Freshwater fisherman long ago had to adapt their behavior to preserve their resource and "right to fish". Saltwater fishing is 50 years behind, but we are going to have to do the same or be shut down. Fight it and we'll end up like the recreational/commercial migratory bird hunting industry of yesteryear. Wake up and go with the flow and we can end up like the freshwater fisheries of today.

Neither is what we want. One is better than the other.

[scottw]

"going with the flow"....like this?

The White House created an Interagency Oceans Policy Task Force in June and gave them only 90 days to develop a comprehensive federal policy for all U.S. coastal, ocean and Great Lakes waters. Under the guise of 'protecting' these areas, the current second phase of the Task Force direction is to develop zoning which may permanently close vast areas of fishing waters nationwide. This is to be completed by December 9, 2009.

Dave Pfeiffer, President of Shimano American Corporation explained, "In spite of extensive submissions from the recreational fishing community to the Task Force in person and in writing, they failed to include any mention of the over one million jobs or the 6o million anglers which may be affected by the new policies coast to coast. Input from the environmental groups who want to put us off the water was adopted into the report verbatim – the key points we submitted as an industry were ignored."

here are a couple of other worthy reads regarding Pew and the "no-take" zones...how they get implemented and in which direction the "flow" is quickly moving...

Sport Fishing
Did environmentalists screw up with the Marine Life Protection Act? | News & Culture in The North Bay

this National Angler Registry has simply given the feds the ability to bypass the various rec. groups that may lobby or otherwise put up a stink with regard to closures or curtailments of access....the feds can now claim to have accurate and up to date scientific data through direct contact based on random calls to area fishermen that these groups sometimes represent and in fact have better data than the anecdotal evidence from little fishing clubs/organizations ...read the NOAA justification for this registry..."create and angler phone book"The registry will serve as a national “phone book” of anglers, allowing NOAA to quickly and easily reach current fishermen to learn about their most recent fishing activities. That information is a crucial part of our ability to estimate the health of fish stocks, and to check that protections put in place to preserve fisheries will be fair, effective, and based on sound science. The registry is also a tool for recreational fishermen. As the first comprehensive accounting of the scope of recreational saltwater fishing in the U.S., it will help to more fully demonstrate anglers’ economic, conservation and marine stewardship impacts. ....read any of the accounts from Australia to the US West Coast, the Gulf and you will find the common theme that the rec fishermen/sport are being ignored, they won't need to hear from the angling groups, we've already contacted the members ourselves....thank you...goodbye..hang up or wait on hold for the next available activist/bureaucrat

[zimmy]

No thanks, count me out.