So....

[JohnnyD]

Originally Posted by big jay

It's a bait issue - midwater pair trawlers have decimated all the inshore bait (macs and herring) to the point where most off the giants that normally summer in the gulf of maine keep moving north to canada (where they outlawed mid-water trawling and have ass-loads of bait).

Over the last several years the Canadians have had so many fish that they are filling their quotas in days (PEI lasted less than a week last year) - they are also getting smaller (presumably U.S. fish) earlier than they ever had. Canada was always huge fish late in the year (700 was small and it was all OCT/Nov).
Now they have 500lb fish in July.

If we fix our bait situation, we will fix our Giant fishery.

The overall #'s of fish haven't really changed, its the geographic distribution. Giants don't care about border lines, they just want something to eat.

Absolutely makes sense, but all of the above seems to fall into my second point: "the regulatory body has unacceptably high expectations with regards to the health of the tuna population" - in this case, it just happens to be a regional issue.

To get back to the core of RIROCKHOUND's initial post regarding the best interest of the fish...
Isn't the unfortunate reality of the situation that the Canadian quota (where the bigger fish intended to be caught for the US quota are) should be increased and the US quota (where the quota isn't being filled due to smaller fish) should be decreased?