John McMurray

The good, the bad, the ugly of live-release contests
By Capt. John McMurray

Historically, sportsmen have been the most effective leaders of the conservation movement. However, our record is far from perfect. From the perspective of conservation, it is difficult to defend the traditional “dead-fish” tournament. At their worst, they encourage anglers to kill overfished species, including sharks and billfish, merely to win a cash prize and transient bragging rights. Even at their best, they promote the retention of large, fecund fish that might better contribute to the spawning stock and subordinate the entire, complex angling experience to a competitor’s standings on the leader board. The sight of dead marlin lying in a dumpster after being weighed in is no less offensive than the fact of commercial overharvest and bycatch, and provides commercial fishers with some justification for continuing their own destructive fishing practices.

Unfortunately, kill tournaments continue to increase in popularity. The American Fisheries Society listed an annual total of 978 such events in 2006. Thus, it’s not just about perception. The negative impacts of tournaments on fishery resources have concerned fishery managers for years.

Decades ago, freshwater tournament organizers realized that kill tournaments benefited no one. They created intricate catch-and-release largemouth-bass and walleye contests with public weigh-ins and release events that advertisers could sponsor. It was brilliant, and today the freshwater tournament circuit is larger and more profitable than its saltwater equivalent.

Slowly and reluctantly, the saltwater community is following suit. Freshwater tournament organizers such as FLW now also put on large saltwater release tournament series. Although such contests are still in the minority, they are a big step forward. However, they are not perfect by. Post- release mortality remains a big issue.

Unlike fish caught by traditional catch and release anglers, those taken in tournaments are subject to considerably more stress, generated by being held in live wells for extended periods, the transport and weigh-in process, the use of fish for photographic opportunities, and tournament release procedures.

Striped Bass

Striped bass tournaments exemplify the problem. Boats that target striped bass rarely have live-wells big enough to adequately accommodate a tournament-winning fish. Furthermore, anglers targeting striped bass frequently fish in rough water that either makes the use of live wells difficult or batters the fish kept within such enclosures. Thus, holding a release tournament for striped bass was not practical. The advent of the “Striper Tube”, while still not yet widely used, has created a new release-tournament option that seems to be catching on.

The device is a vertical 40” tube with an electrical pump at the bottom which circulates sea water over a fish’s gills. It allegedly allows anglers to keep fish alive and healthy for an unlimited amount of time so they can participate in a live weigh-in without killing the fish. The American Fisheries Society has determined the Striper Tube will keep fish alive as claimed, but only in cooler water conditions. Its vertical design appears to calm the fish and reduce its activity, contributing to post-release survival. Hopefully, the availability of such a device will encourage at least some tournament sponsors to adopt a catch and release format.

However, there are also legal issues to consider. “Highgrading,” the release of a smaller fish already in possession in order to replace it with a larger one, is illegal in many states. The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation is currently scrutinizing the FLW’s striper release tournament for just that reason, since New York does not permit high-grading for any marine species.

Specs and Redfish Tourneys

While there are many studies of release mortality in marine recreational fisheries and in freshwater tournaments, there is only one study of saltwater tournament-related mortality. Dr. Gregory Stunz of Texas A&M, through a grant from Coastal Conservation Association, recently conducted a study assessing tournament-related mortality of spotted seatrout at 10 live-release fishing tournaments held in Texas.

Combined overall mean mortality was 22.9%. Of that figure, 10.4% of the fish were weighed-in dead, 14.1 percent died in tournament and an additional 1.9% died during a 14-day observation period in laboratory tanks.

Mortality rates were higher during the warmer months, a finding that is consistent with other release mortality studies. Thus, tournament organizers should avoid scheduling events during late spring and summer, in order to maximize survival.

Stunz’s results also suggest that hooking location is a major factor influencing mortality, and that fishing with artificials minimized the number of fish hooked in vulnerable areas. Thus, tournaments interested in reducing mortality should ban the use of bait, or at the very least require participants to use circle-hooks.

While the study suggests that spotted seatrout mortality in live-release tournaments exceeds that observed under normal catch-and-release fishing practices, it also suggests that tournament-related mortality rates are low considering the amount of handling that occurs. This is encouraging for the continued support of live-release fishing tournaments, and not just for specs. “While this paper was on spotted seatrout,” notes Stunz, “I would think red drum would have even lower mortality.” Stunz is currently looking for funding to complete a similar study for red drum.

Billfish Release Tournaments

There are no tournament-specific mortality studies for big game fish. Many scientists feel that recreational fishing is recreational fishing, regardless of whether or not it is conducted during a tournament. However, this may not be the case. During release-tournaments, the idea is to get the fish hooked, to the boat, and released for points as quickly as possible so that the boat can move on to the next fish. “The fish is angled and handled quickly, thereby minimizing stress and reducing release mortality.” notes Dr. Greg Skomal who has done extensive work on pelagic fish release mortality. “During kill tournaments, which typically have self-imposed and federally mandated high minimum sizes, time is taken to measure the fish at the boat, thereby increasing handling time and physiological/physical trauma that may result in mortality if/when the fish is released.”

The required use of circle hooks in offshore release-tournaments would greatly reduce release mortality for pelagic fish. NMFS planned to put such a rule into effect this year, but withdrew the proposal for a period of one year, at the urging of s handful of tournament organizers,, despite studies indicating that the use of non-offset circle hooks, instead of J-hooks, would reduce post-release mortality of white marlin by as much as 66 percent, which could translate into about 500 additional fish surviving each year. Given the dire condition of the white marlin population and lawsuits brought by conservation groups seeking to compel NMFS to recommend listing white marlin under the Endangered Species Act, the tournament organizers’ opposition to circle hooks is puzzling, since the additional 500 marlin killed by J-hooks this year strengthens the litigants’ arguments, and threatens the end of all offshore tournament fishing

Conclusion:

Dead fish displayed to the public during kill-tournament weigh-ins harm the credibility of anglers who argue for needed fisheries conservation measures. While one can argue that all tournaments cause some harm, catch-and-release tournaments are certainly a better alternative than those requiring that fish be killed. Saltwater anglers may finally be embracing such events. Although commercial fishers and PETA types love to wail and moan about release-mortality, with care such mortality can be kept within acceptable levels. That’s good news for the fish and for the anglers that target them. Hopefully we will see more release events tournaments in the near future.

Originally published in Flyfishing in Saltwaters Magazine: Nov/Dec 2007

The tragic decline in the credibility of the angling community as a conservation force.
By Capt. John McMurray

At one time, anglers were proudly at the forefront of the marine conservation movement, calling on regulators to cut landings and impose more restrictions on all users, including anglers, for the betterment of our fish populations. Anglers’ passionate efforts to rebuild the striped bass population in the 1980s and ‘90s, including wide support for a harvest moratorium, represent just one shining example of that conservation legacy. However, in recent years, that all seems to have changed.

The problem seems most acute in the upper mid-Atlantic region where I reside. There, a small but very vocal minority has somehow managed to hijack many of the local outdoor publications. Their intemperate rants, which sound like nothing so much as the self-serving rhetoric of the New England commercial fishing community, makes it appear as if the recreational fishing community has abandoned a conservation ethic and adopted the “we-need-to-kill-more-fish-and-to-hell-with-the-future” mantra that was (and still is) all too commonly heard repeated on fish docks anywhere from Brielle to Gloucester to Portland.

It’s easy to understand why such sentiments arise. People who make their living by putting a price on the head of a fish see more restrictive regulations and other conservation efforts as immediate and direct threats to their livelihood. Concerned with paying for this month’s dockage and next week’s groceries, they concentrate on short-term profits and are nearly blind to the long-term benefits of science-based fisheries management. Thus, fisheries managers must rise to the challenge of making difficult decisions that focus on the long term, knowing that such a “tough love” approach is best for fish and fishermen alike.

I find it extremely disturbing that a contingent of the fishing community has now gone so far as to partner with the commercial fishing community, and continues to mount a concerted effort to tear the most important conservation provisions out of the Magnuson Stevens Fishery Conservation Act, which was reauthorized after much work a bit more than a year ago. Using bullying tactics that seem calculated to intimidate and stigmatize anyone who opposes them, they label conservationists, including conservation-minded anglers, as “elitists,” “environmental radicals” and “extremists” trying to “take food off the table,” “putting good folks out of business” etc. While that is simply not true, it has had the effect of making many anglers suspicious of biologists, fisheries managers and conservation efforts generally, and creating a “real men kill fish” attitude among the less knowledgeable members of the angling community. Readers need only look at previous fishery management success stories, including striped bass, haddock and red drum, to understand how important angler-supported conservation efforts are to the health of our fisheries, and to realize how the current anti-conservation message being spewed from some media outlets threatens the long-term prospects of the nation’s marine resources.

Hiding behind the euphemism “flexibility”, commercial fishermen and their allies in the recreational community call for the extension or removal of rebuilding deadlines for species such as summer flounder, grouper and red snapper. Years ago, we heard New England groundfishermen voice similar cries as they devastated stocks of fish that had previously supported not only North Americans, but most of coastal Europe, for more than five centuries. It is sad that some who purport to represent anglers would take us back to the days when too much emphasis on short-term economic well-being led to the collapse of not only our northeastern fisheries, but a traditional way of life in the region. Now, despite a decade of tougher management, cod populations are still a shadow of what they were, and there are serious doubts that some species, such as winter flounder, will ever come back. The commercial fishing industry’s short-term mindset has brought great hardship to commercial fishermen; I now fear that anglers have also lost their long-term perspective, and in adopting the attitudes of the commercial fishery, will suffer the same awful fate.

Editorial dishonesty is adding to the problem. Too many publications and too many columnists prejudice their readers against scientific fisheries management, throwing around emotion-laden catch phrases such as “Arbitrary rebuilding deadlines”, “pie in the sky targets” and other such catch phrases, in an effort to make scientists and conservationists look like fools. (My favorite nonsense headline came from a New Jersey paper which announced “Fluke Anglers Take On Experts Blinded by Science”, suggesting that knowledge and technical expertise is antithetical to proper fisheries management, and that ignorance is, in fact, bliss. These folks don’t have a leg to stand on when confronted with the science, but since they never print both sides of a story, they give their readers no opportunity to form an educated opinion about fisheries issues—which is what they want, because education is the greatest threat to their position.

There is a very real battle underway for the soul of the angling community, pitting those who are fighting to kill more fish now, and perhaps never fully restoring our fisheries, against folks who have taken a longer view and support precautionary measures to ensure there are abundant stocks of fish around for the next generation.

I know where I stand. The question is, who’s doing the “right” thing here, and which side are you on?

How your tax dollars contribute to overfishing
By Capt. John McMurray

Paying taxes is certainly not something we take any pleasure in doing, but Franklin D. Roosevelt correctly noted “Taxes, after all, are dues that we pay for the privileges of membership in an organized society.” The underlying assumption to Roosevelt’s comments were that such “dues” would be used to advance the public interest. In the case of our overstressed marine fisheries, that has not always been the case.

For at least the past 50 years, one of the problems that has bedeviled fishery managers is “overcapacity,” which can be described simply as “too many fishermen chasing too few fish.” Unfortunately, while one branch of government is trying to solve such problems, another perpetuates them through subsidies and incentive programs that defy market forces as well as the dictates of nature which would have otherwise rationalized in an economically unsustainable commercial fishing industry. As a result of such government intervention, the industry has continued to overfish many historically and biologically significant fish stocks. And, it is the public’s tax dollars that are supporting such destruction of public resources.

One example is the Fisheries Financing Program, which grew out of the Fisheries Loan Fund in the Fish and Wildlife Act of 1956. Under that plan, the federal government guarantees loans made to fishing vessel owners, fish processors and other fishing-related businesses. In return, banks work with the government to offer fishermen loans with longer amortization periods and very low interest rates. Although the lending bank is a private entity, NOAA Fisheries play a major role, processing the loan applications and often introduce fishermen to a potential lender. Most such loans have financed the construction, replacement, and/or upgrading of commercial vessels thus helping to create a large fleet of increasingly advanced fishing vessels that continue to wreak havoc on fish and fish habitat.

While recent regulations prohibit any financing or refinancing that could contribute to overcapitalization by increasing harvesting capacity, such regulations can’t undo the harm that the program has caused by overcapitalizing the Gulf of Mexico shrimp fishery, the New England groundfish fishery and the U.S. Pacific tuna fishery, all of which are now suffering the effects of depleted stocks and increased regulation.

The Capital Construction Fund (CCF) created by the Merchant Marine Act of 1936, may be an even more harmful incentive program, and one without even minimal safeguards against overcapitalization. CCF was conceived after the passage of the Magnuson Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act in the late 1970s, when it was thought that U.S. fishermen would enjoy substantial increases in landings once foreign fishermen were excluded from US waters, and reflected a Federal policy of encouraging the expansion and modernizing of the U.S. fishing fleet.

CCF, which is jointly administered by NOAA Fisheries and the Internal Revenue Service, allows fishermen to defer income tax on profits from fishing by setting such money aside in a special account for the eventual construction, upgrading or acquisition of fishing vessels. The amount deferred is, in effect, an interest free vessel construction loan from the Government. Just like the Fisheries Financing Program, CCF has had the effect of increasing the number, size, range and efficiency of commercial fishing vessels, so they can go out farther and more effectively exploit declining stocks.

Besides providing direct financial aid, the Federal Government has a long-standing record of providing free marketing, promotion, and development assistance to the nation’s fisheries, even those that are exploiting stocks in serious decline. NOAA Fisheries has also played a key role in fishing gear technology development and seafood processing technology, thus helping fishers become more efficient.

NOAA Fisheries has also advocated the development of fisheries for so-called “underutilized species”, providing incentives and subsidies for promotion, marketing and, in some cases vessel refitting. A number of instances exist in which government incentives to expand underutilized fisheries have led to quick overcapacity and overfishing of the target species. The tragic collapse of several Atlantic shark species provides what may be the best example.

Federal “Fishery Disaster Assistance” authorized under the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act has also proven problematic. Such assistance might be appropriate in the case of natural disasters, such as hurricanes and other severe coastal storms. It also might be appropriate when fisheries collapse due to human activity unrelated to fishing, such as the sharp decline in Pacific salmon populations after the damming of rivers in the Pacific Northwest cut off the fish’s access to productive spawning habitat. Even in the case of natural and man-made “disasters”, it is not clear that using federal funding to restore the status quo is a better long-term policy than using the same funds to implement capacity reduction through buyouts or other means.

However, we witness a clear abuse of Fishery Disaster Assistance funding when federal money is used to bail out commercial fishing fleets that have brought the so-called “disaster” upon themselves through pure greed and lack of foresight, and fished stocks down to the point of collapse. In 1995, a thirty million dollar handout of that sort was provided to New England commercial fishermen to help them through the self-inflicted “crisis” caused by the depletion of cod and other groundfish. Today, cod and other groundfish stocks are still in bad shape and the fishing industry remains a basket case. It is very likely that both the fish and the fishing industry would have been far healthier if market forces had been allowed to rationalize the fleet and force the large number of marginally profitable operators out of the fishery.

Today, history seems poised to repeat itself. The Governor of Massachusetts has requested Federal Disaster Assistance for commercial fishermen in his state, claiming that recent regulations, intended to help recover groundfish stocks from decades of overfishing, have caused “a true economic disaster.” He is basically asking the public to insulate New England fishermen from the predictable consequences of their own actions, and to pick up the tab for years of avoidable overfishing. Some argue that the commercial fleets were only following federal rules when they plundered groundfish stocks, ignoring the fact that the commercial fishing industry’s lobbyists relentlessly and, until recently, successfully pushed for federal rules that allowed overfishing to continue. It is absurd to even consider using pubic tax money to again save the commercial fishing industry from its own folly, and naïve to believe that, should such bailout take place, the fishermen wouldn’t immediately seek regulations that would allow them to continue to overfish groundfish.

Not all federal subsidies are bad. Programs that buy back vessels, permits or quota shares provide an economic incentive for fishermen to leave the industry should receive a larger share of federal fisheries assistance funding. Such programs were not effective in the past, because they did not give adequate consideration to “latent capacity.” Vessels owners would sell back a vessel or particular permits, then merely concentrate their fishing effort on other fisheries not included in the program. Other fishers who. although permitted, were not active participants in a fishery, will take advantage of their previously unused permits to enter the fishery and fill the void left by those that are bought out. Fishermen can also alter their behavior when they know that a buyout program is being considered, staying in a fishery longer than they otherwise would have, hoping that the buyout will bring a financial windfall. However, good buyout programs can be designed to minimize such occurrences. Some buyback efforts, including effirts financed by the fishing industry, are currently under way.

Subsidies for job retraining, which permits the economic diversification of previously fishing-dependent communities, are also a productive use of federal money. Programs for non-fishing economic development can assist displaced workers find other jobs and identify new economic enterprises in such communities. Finally, it is difficult to argue against using federal funding for research and development of bycatch reduction devices and habitat-friendly gear.

Thus, federal fisheries assistance funding is not inherently bad, but merely misdirected. The federal government should stop providing economic incentives for economically marginal businesses to remain active in a fishery, when market forces and a scarcity of fish dictate otherwise. Congress should end support for the construction and refitting of vessels, and permit banks to base their lending decisions on the viability of the borrower’s business. Dollars previously allocated to such programs should be redirected toward efforts that will end overcapitalization, reduce bycatch and improve gear selectivity. Using taxpayer dollars in an attempt to keep economically moribund businesses on life support is a breach of the public trust and the worst kind of pork barrel spending.

On May 5, 2007, a bipartisan group of 13 United States Senators introduced a resolution calling for the U.S. to pursue an international ban on government subsidies that contribute to overfishing. As egregious as some U.S. programs are, this nation provides far fewer such subsidies than does Japan, the European Union or China. The Senate resolution inherently recognizes that fact, but the Senate should also look inward and propose a national ban on destructive subsidies as well. However, such a measure would not be popular in many coastal states, and we are not likely to see such a proposal made in the foreseeable future.

A prior version of this piece appeared in FFSW Magazine

By Capt. John McMurray

Unless you failed out of school by junior high, you are familiar with “evolution” and Darwin’s Theory of Natural Selection. If you are not, it can be summarized quite simply: “the fit survive.” In the natural world predators pick off the weak, the young and the infirm, leaving the fastest-growing, strongest, and biggest of the species to contribute to the gene pool. But, today’s methods of fishery management, particularly those used in many recreational fisheries, may be turning the natural selection process 180-degrees.

Instead of weeding out the weak from the herd, well-intentioned fisheries managers trying to manage fish through size limits have directed a great majority of the fishing pressure and subsequent mortality on the biggest, oldest fish that are most fit for survival. Call it “unnatural selection” if you will, and the top predators (us fishermen) are the ones doing the selecting.

Dr. David Conover, head of Marine Sciences Research Center at Stony Brook University, NY published some interesting findings in that regard. Through his work with Atlantic silversides (a small bait fish in the mid-Atlantic and northeast) he was able to provide the first evidence that the growth rates of fish and the productivity of populations can evolve rapidly in response to size-selective harvest.

Conover’s work was based on three populations of 1000 Atlantic silversides raised in identical, but separate environments. Ninety percent of the fish from each group were harvested according to size. In one population he removed the smallest 900, in the second he removed the largest 900, in the third, he removed a random 900. The remaining fish in each controlled setting were allowed to reproduce.

After four generations, the average weight of the largest fish in the population from which the largest fish were removed was 1.05 grams, compared to 3.17 grams in the random-selection tank and 6.47 grams in the tank from which only the smallest fish were removed. The survivors of the group from which only the largest fish were taken show very obvious reductions in average size and total weight. Furthermore, the number of survivors in the group from which only small fish were taken was double that of the population from which only large fish were harvested.

Thus, it appears taking only the biggest fish from a population may cause that population to produce smaller and fewer fish in the future. It may also concentrate genetic growth traits. Because traditional minimum size limits concentrate harvest on larger individuals, fish have a low probability of making it to spawning age, and of surviving once they get there. Thus, evolutionary adaptation may favor fish that spawn younger.

If that is true, anglers will be looking at future sportfish populations comprised almost entirely of “runts,” containing very few if any “trophies.” We may already be seeing this trend. In my neck of the woods, there seems to be fewer large stripers, yet an abundance of small fish. In 1940 the average cod brought to the dock in New England was 36 inches long. Today they average about 24 inches, a decline of one-third. The big cod are for practical purposes, gone. There is also data showing that cod are now maturing at much smaller sizes than was previously the case. Pelagic species are showing the same trend. There is some evidence suggesting that that eastern-stock bluefin tuna mature far earlier, and at smaller sizes, than western-stock bluefin, perhaps as a result of thousands of years of natural selection in the face of traditional Mediterranean fisheries.

A lack of large fish, and the loss of a natural distribution of age and size classes within a fish population, has important implications for long-term stock productivity and stability. Dr. Conover’s studies revealed that removal of the large individual silversides from the population resulted in the production of smaller egges and larvae. Such decline in larvae size was accompanied by a decline in swimming strength and feeding rates. The smaller larvae were also less able to convert food to body mass, and less willing to forage for food. It took only five generations for such changes to occur.

Smaller fish produce fewer offspring, which are less able to survive. A lack of variability in the small-fish gene-pool also renders such fish less able to withstand environmental challenges, such as periodic spawning failure or, disease. A spawning stock comprised of many age classes is more stable, and the better able to withstand the extraordinary events in the ecosystem which occur from time to time.

If minimum size limits are not the answer, how should we to manage sportfish? The obvious answer is to implement slot limits, allowing folks to keep a fish that falls within certain size parameters. This is already done with a number of species in a number of states. But it does not work with every species.

A slot limit can have an undesirable effect by focusing the pressure on a weak year that can’t tolerate the concentrated fishing effort. In popular fisheries such as striped bass there is a risk of severely depleting a weak year class that happens to fall within a slot limit’s bounds. The right way to use a slot limit is to reset it annually, tailoring the limits to the needs of the stock, by concentrating harvest on those year classes most able to tolerate the pressure and directing it away from the most vulnerable year classes. For instance, one year the slot limit might be 28 to 36”. The next year it might be 24” to 28,” to take advantage of a younger, very abundant cohort. However no such system exists today.

In species with long adult lives and low susceptibility to release mortality, the key factor may be “escapement” - setting a maximum size to assure that sufficient large fish survive to constitute a healthy spawning stock. Generally, the best course of action may also be to keep fishing mortality low enough to allow a more natural age and size structure in the population. Emphasis should be placed on a size limit that permits the majority–ideally 100%–of the fish in the population to spawn prior to being harvested. That would require fishing at a rate well below Maximum Sustainable Yield (the most fish that can be taken out of the population while maintaining long-term sustainability) and at higher minimum size limits.

Unfortunately, the politics of fisheries management have historically prevented such a management approach. Many fishing industry spokesmen argue that we have to kill as many fish as possible. Any time that knowledgeable and responsible folks even suggest reducing mortality and raising size limits, they are immediately labeled “elitists” that “don’t care about the common man being able to take a fish home for his family” and subsequently get trashed by the angling press. Unfortunately there may not be any fish worth taking home unless managers stand up and take notice of Conover’s work as it relates to the declining size trends in many local fisheries.

BEACH REPLENISHMENT OR BEACH DESTRUCTION?
Why the Army Core of Engineers Sucks.
By Captain John McMurray

The Army Corps of Engineers is one of the largest government agencies in the US, dwarfing behemoths such as the departments of Labor, Education, and Energy. While a third of the bureaucracy work on military programs the rest focus on civil works which unsuccessfully seek to control forces of nature. Arrogantly, the Corps has moved forward with ditching, draining, straightening and damming efforts that have been destructive to fish and fish habit in almost every state. In addition to being one of the largest bureaucracies, they are also one of most effective at generating congressionally supported pork-barrel projects to keep it busy. That’s why it didn’t surprise me when I heard about the ill-conceived plan to “re-nourish” (a fancy word for dredge and fill) my home-town beach in Long Beach, New York. If it goes though, I can kiss the fishing here goodbye. Unfortunately, this egregious project is only the tip of the iceberg. Because of the hysteria brought on by prior years’ hurricane seasons, the array of large-scale beach dredge-and-fill projects currently being considered constitute a real and significant threat to “Essential Fish Habitat” and near-shore fishing opportunities in every coastal state.

Most estimates indicate that approximately 80% of the U.S. shoreline is eroding. While this fact is somewhat disturbing, it shouldn’t be. Since the beginning, beaches have been changing their location but retaining their general shape. The conflict arises when shoreline retreat meets human obstacles, such as houses, highways, and seawalls. Dr. Orrin Pilkey, renowned Duke University professor and author of The Corps and The Shore said it best, “Erosion isn’t a problem for beaches, just for buildings.” These structures block the retreat causing the sandy area to narrow which leads to a reduction in sand supply to adjacent beaches. Beaches get narrower and can eventually wash away, eliminating the buffer between the open-ocean and coastal properties.

Environmental Damage:

The idea behind the Corps’ dredge-and-fill solution to this problem is to strip-mine sand in offshore locations with industrial dredges and dump it on what they determined to be eroding beaches. While this may sound harmless, these projects inevitably destroy important marine habitats in off-shore grounds, and then further wreak havoc on the ecosystem when dumping sand on beaches. Almost all seafloor-dwelling marine life occurs in that 6-inch margin of surface. Offloading fill on beaches smothers tidal wildlife. Hundreds of species of crustaceans, mollusks, and annelids that form the prey base for important sportfish are killed or have to move to another location.

The filling eventually covers important near-shore reefs that hold important juvenile as well as adult populations of sportfish and the bait they depend on. There have been some mitigation efforts with artificial reefs, but they don’t work in the way natural reefs do as they don’t generate same food sources, plus they are placed in water too deep to provide the shallow structure required for juvenile fishes. After decades of negligent dredge and fill projects, the law now requires buffer areas between the dredge sites and reefs, which are federally designated as Essential Fish Habitat and/or Habitat Areas of Particular Concern. But, there are no consistent standards, and as sand supplies shrink, regulators will likely face pressure to decrease buffer distances. Regardless, the current buffer requirement isn’t sufficient because the sediments migrate anyway, eventually burying these reefs.

In many instances the Corps doesn’t dump beach quality sand back onto the beach because this type of sentiment is in short supply. Beach invertebrate expert and professor of the University of North Carolina Institute of Marine Sciences Dr. Pete Peterson notes: “It’s like going out into your backyard and loading five feet of dirt onto the grass. Not much is going to survive. The recovery you get will depend on whether you put the same sort of dirt on your lawn.” The particles used are either too big or small in most cases. In some instances, the Corps has used small particles geologists would call silts and clays or what we would call mud. Not only does it erode easily and quickly, but it becomes suspended creating a situation where some organisms suffocate the turbid water. Of course, the murky water rules out any sight-fishing opportunities, but even worse it inhibits feeding as many fish are visual feeders, including red drum, snook, jacks, permit, bluefish, mackerel, stripers, bonito, and flounders. Furthermore, many of the larval and bait fishes are filter feeders and they end up being forced to filter out mud along with the plankton they are targeting which most likely kills a lot of them. Unfortunately, the murky water exists not just in the site where the beach fill takes place. The turbidity extends down the beach for miles, disturbing habitats well beyond the site zone.

The small particle fill that remains on the bottom becomes compacted, creating a situation where it is very difficult for digging beach organisms like mole crabs and worms to burrow. These animals simply get washed off the face of the beach. Dozens of studies have shown significant impacts to beach invertebrate populations.

When the corps uses large particles the result is just as horrific. Beach organisms simply get buried. Even if the Corps manages to find similar sized sand the result is still unsatisfactory. Dr. Hal Wanless, Chairman of Geological Sciences at the University of Miami’s Rosenstiel School notes, “The sediments mined offshore either ‘grew’ there or migrated there because they’re too fine to stay on the beach. Even when the grains are roughly the same size as the polished quartz beach sediments, they won’t behave the same in the surf zone.”

Because the Corps very rarely documents the environmental impacts of these projects, the cumulative effects on the coastal resources are not well documented. Experts estimate that Corps beach projects have created scores of large dredge craters among mid-shelf reef habitat and buried thousands of acres of near-shore reefs and sea-grass beds, not to mention altered migration patterns of most beach accessible sportfish. Add to this the possible exacerbation of transport and/or biological uptake of toxicants and other pollutants released at either dredge or fill sites and one begins to get a picture of how bad these projects really are for the ocean environment and the fishing.

The near-shore environment effected by these projects is so important to so many juvenile gamefish and forage species that cumulatively the habitat loss and diminishment of forage effect fishing not just off the beach, but everywhere else you can expect to find your favorite sportfish.

The National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) mandates detailed assessments for all federal projects that can have significant environmental impacts. Unfortunately, NEPA gives the authority to do these assessments to the Army Corps of Engineers, the agency that is typically the project proponent. Impact statements continuously assume the effects are minimal or do not exist. The dredge and fill lobby maintains that whatever effect the projects are having are only temporary. But the fact of the matter is that most of these projects require continued “re-nourishment,” so even if the beach critters do recover they will be covered again.

Effectiveness:

Everyone agrees that beach replenishment is only a temporary solution as the fill just gets washed back to sea. According to Pilkey “26 percent of replenished U.S. Atlantic Coast barrier beaches (from the south shore of Long Island to Miami) were effectively gone in less than one year, while 62 percent lasted between two and five years, and 12 percent (all in southeast Florida) lasted more than five years.” Filled beaches erode two to twelve times faster than native beaches. Shoreline engineering ultimately weakens the beaches, and coastal geologists have warned that interfering with natural beach processes may actually increase the risk of flooding.

Development:

Despite beach erosion problems and the fact that development accelerates damage to the beach, almost every state on the east coast continues to allow new development and rebuilding right up to the fore-dune. Federal Emergency Management insurance has allowed home and hotel owners to recoup losses after weather events and to be provided with sand at taxpayers’ expense so they can rebuild in the exact same place further compounding the erosion. Continued dredge and filling of beaches will further open the way for new waves of building on private property that is now un-developable.

There are more sensible models for development. When Hurricane Opal hit the Florida panhandle in 1995, towns like Destin and Dune-Allen were devastated, but the town of Seaside — a recently constructed village of 280 old-Florida-style frame homes set back behind the dunes — came out unscathed.

Inappropriate Tax expenditure:

The watchdog organization Taxpayers for Common Sense claims that federal beach dredge and fill projects are merely a subsidy for wealthy beach communities benefiting only those who can afford property along coast, arguing that taxpayers wind up paying to protect private property. This is particularly noteworthy, considering the fact that many of the filled beaches offer very little parking/public access.

Solutions:

Environmental groups have proposed an alternative to dredge and fill projects called “Planned Retreat.” They are suggesting that the government begin to buy up threatened properties and return them to a pre-developed condition. Dredge and fill proponents say this would cost billions of dollars and send coastal real estate values plummeting. But given the massive reoccurring expenditures involved in beach filling, this alternative would be cheaper and in the interest of the general public and beach visitors rather than the few wealthy coastal property owners. Of course, the political will necessary to do that is not there yet because, yes, it does seem a bit on the extreme side. But, cutting taxes and buying threatened properties out when erosion reaches their foundations does make sense. That obviously can’t happen in places populated with all high rises. Dredge and fill projects will undoubtedly continue there. In these instances Environmental Groups are asking that the Corps do these projects in ways that aren’t so harmful to near-shore habitat and to not proceed with giant, squared off, massive beaches that extend a quarter mile off shore where they are burying everything in sight every five to seven years. Right now, that’s the standard template in almost all off the East Coast.

Conclusion:

The Corps of Engineers is at a crossroads. The 19th-Century thinking that they can ditch, drain, straighten, dam, levee, control and defy Mother Nature is changing. In 1990, “environmental restoration” joined flood control and navigation as a primary mission of the Corps’. The agency should consider this mission here and reevaluate the long-term costs of all these projects. Furthermore, policies should be put in place to discourage hazardous coastal development that threatens the environment and commits government to doing little more than throwing buckets of money to hold back the ocean.

The Surfrider Foundation is leading the charge to ensure these dredge and fill projects are not carried out unless absolutely necessary and if so, that they are done so in a less destructive manner. For more information, check out their website at www.surfrider.com and click on your local chapter’s link.

Originally published in Flyfishing in Saltwaters

By Capt. John McMurray

In writing this article I had initially set out to pen a brief, easy to understand rundown of how the marine fisheries management systems works. However, the title I came up with struck me as ironic and somewhat funny. I thought perhaps I should use the title: Fisheries Management by Dummies, as opposed to Fisheries Management for Dummies, as the prior is a pretty accurate description of how our marine resources have been managed as of late. But what can we expect when industry insiders have a big part in writing their own regulations.

NOAA Fisheries, the federal bureaucracy in charge of fisheries management, conducts the scientific research on which all fisheries regulations are ostensibly based. While the law requires the agency to actually issue the regulations, such regulations are largely based on recommendations from the eight regional fishery management councils.

Each state belonging to a Council is guaranteed at least two seats, one going to its “fisheries professional” and another “obligatory” seat to a member of the private sector; in addition, there are “at large” seats that may be filled by private-sector representatives from any of the member states. Governors of member states nominate each Council’s appointed members, who are supposed to be “knowledgeable regarding the conservation and management, or the commercial or recreational harvest, of the fishery resources of the geographic area concerned.” The Secretary of Commerce than appoints the council members from the list of governors’ appointees.

Despite the fact that fish are a public resource, the overwhelming majority of nongovernmental members of the councils are fishing industry insiders: commercial fishermen, operators of charter boats, seafood processors, etc., thus they have a direct financial interest in the fishery resource they are charged with conserving. Since members with a financial stake in the outcome of a vote will, far too often, strain all logic and ignore applicable science in an effort to maintain or even increase current fishing limits, the situation inevitably creates a fox-in-charge-of-the-hen-house scenario.

Fishery management council members are subject to conflict-of-interest rules, but the standard is so lax that virtually no one is ever disqualified from a vote, and only rarely does one recuse himself. Undoubtedly, most council members see themselves as representatives of specific special interests rather than the public trust. They take an oath to act for the good of the nation, but it defies human nature to willingly vote against the financial interests of family and friends.

This perceived and real conflict of interest is only part of the problem. Council members are also responsible for both conservation and allocation decisions. Not only do they decide how many fish are caught, but also who can catch them. Because larger catches are easier to divvy up among competing fishery interests, the councils’ allocation responsibilities all too often cause them to set fishery limits which are too high and undermine fishery conservation. In a rational world, the science alone should determine catch levels (how many fish can sustainably be taken from the sea) while the councils should determine how the catch is allocated.

Since the passage of Sustainable Fishing Act in 1996 this has gotten somewhat better, but it still isn’t “fixed.” For the most part the science does decide the quota and the council allocates it. But, if there is some doubt about the science, the councils tend to pick the highest permissible number, but if they pick a harvest that is not sustainable, NOAA Fisheries won’t let it go as we saw in the case of fluke this winter.

Prior to 1996 councils would consistently override scientific conclusions and set catch limits that were too high because the Magnuson Act required them to take into account the socioeconomic impacts on fishermen and the communities they support. By law Councils could not use the science alone to make equitable decisions. On the surface, this may seem like a rational rule, however, it had enabled shortsighted Councils to make irresponsible allocation and harvest decisions that have ruined many fisheries and the communities they support. What happened to the cod fishing communities in New England is a darn good example. After the 1996 socio-economic data may only be used to choose between two plans if both meet the recovery standards.

Both the Pew Oceans Commission and the Bush Administration’s US Commission on Ocean Policy reports make it very clear that the conflict-of-interest issues needed to be addressed if we are to ever have hope of maintaining wild fish stocks at sustainable levels, but so far nothing has been done. The Magnuson Act reauthorization bill that past in the final moments of the last congress did little to address the situation.

The final version failed to include a provision to expand council membership to include a wider range of constituencies instead of just those who stood to profit from fisheries. The bill also failed to limit the voting powers of council members who have direct financial conflicts of interest, although it does mandate “increasing training” for regional fishery council members regarding conflict of interest issues.

We need a legislative fix, but aside from a lot of lip service, from Congress and the Bush administration nothing is in the works. Politicians lack the political will to dismantle the culture of conflicts in the councils. In part, this represents pandering to special interests comprising the fishing industry, but it also reflects the low priority many legislators place on fisheries issues. People like to eat fish, but they are not too interested in where they come from, or how many are left. Fortunately, that seems to be changing with each front page news article that addresses the declining state of our oceans.

(Origionally published in FFSW magazine)

By Captain John McMurray

Fishing is increasingly being maligned by animal rights groups as cruel. For all intents and purposes their arguments tend to border on the ridiculous, and do not really deserve consideration here. However, there also seems to be a growing number of people, both within and outside the angling community, who are critical of light-tackle angling, presenting arguments not very different from those the animal rights groups use to impugn all angling. That puts saltwater flyfishers right in the cross hairs. Given the growing number of light-tackle anglers and saltwater flyfishers, and the increasing pressure on sport-fish stocks, the subject deserves some attention here.

Dionys de Leeuw, in his essay Contemplating the Interests of Fish: The Angler’s Challenge, contends that “Hunters are significantly different from anglers in the respect that they show for an animal’s interest in avoiding pain and suffering. While hunters make every effort to reduce pain and suffering in their game animals, anglers purposely inflict these conditions on fish.” His assertion, on the surface, appears accurate, especially in the case of flyfishers and light-tackle enthusiasts. Hunters strive to make a quicker, cleaner and painless kill, while anglers value the “fight.” We prize those fish that struggle and exhibit the most spectacular response to stress and pain – running away from the boat as fast as possible, jumping in an effort to get away etc… The species that exhibit these fighting qualities to the greatest extent are the fish we consider to be the best targets. De Leeuw writes, “Not only is there no respect shown by anglers to minimize or avoid the fear, pain and suffering that fish experience while struggling for their lives, but it is precisely the physical expression of these conditions for which game fish are valued.”

Saltwater flyfishers add fuel to this argument because their craft involves playing fish in a “sporting” way with flimsy rods and light tippets which inevitably extends what Eugene Balon, in his essay Defense of Fishes or the Questionable Ethics of Sportfishing, describes as the “cruel and immoral” fight. Even if we choose to release the fish, as most saltwater flyfishers do, there is significant mortality due to the physical trauma and stress of hooking the fish as well as the lactic acid build-up due to the extended fight involved. Balon argues that we do not release fish because we are concerned for their well being, but so that the fish can live longer and get bigger, so we can hopefully “torture and release” them again for our own self-satisfaction.

Undoubtedly fly and light-tackle anglers cause fish stress, inflicting some sort of pain and suffering (the weight of scientific evidence suggests that fish do not experience pain in the acute manner experienced by mammals.) However to contend that causing such stress is the sole reason, or even just one of the reasons we practice the act of fly/light tackle angling is absurd. I’m fairly certain that there are very few if any anglers that gain sadistic pleasure out of causing harm to fish. However, it is undeniably true that to most anglers, the harder a fish struggles, the better the fishing experience, and that is a big part of why we choose to use fly and light tackle gear. De Leeuw mentions that this is “avoidable because numerous other non-sporting methods of catching fish are possible such as weirs, traps, fyke nets, fish wheels, and anesthetics.”

Arguments against light-tackle fishing focus on the “respect that anglers show for the interests of the fish.” The problem with that line of reasoning is that it doesn’t take into account the simple fact that we are at the top of the food chain, and these fish that we are targeting are our natural prey. The natural order of our world doesn’t require those at the top of the food-chain to respect the wishes of those below them. A well-fed housecat doesn’t ask whether a mouse wants to “play”, but merely acts according to its nature. An angler “playing” a fish is acting just as naturally. It may be a little tough on the fish, but that’s the way the natural world has arranged itself.

Charles Witek, Chairman of CCA NY put it best “I didn’t ask to be put on top of the food chain, but that’s where I am and it’s a pretty good place to be. I could act with vulpine abandon and kill indiscriminately, and be within my natural rights; however, I choose not to do so, and thus engage in behavior that is both natural and responsible. That doesn’t make me any better than a seal or a bluefish, just different.”

So yes, we may inflict some needless discomfort on the fish and sure, there are plenty of fish that die post- release as a result of our sport. But consider the non-sporting alternative that de Leeuw recommends - killing fish quickly and painlessly, with easy deadly efficient gear. If we all did this than we’d wipe sport-fish stocks out pretty quickly. There is also the option of not fishing at all. But, to do that would be to deny us our ingrained human hunter-gather instincts, and would render us less than nature designed us to be. Whether we keep fish or not, saltwater flyfishing provides the opportunity to be directly connected through a simple strip-strike to a symbolic or real source of food, an increasingly rare opportunity to reaffirm our place in the natural world, a place too-often forgotten in these times of the modern “supermarket-based” food chain.

Fishing is a natural urge that is as old as the human species. Thomas McGuane calls it “an act of racial memory” evoking the mission of the hunter-gather. It’s a survival instinct that is as much a part of our make up as eating or sleeping. In this day and age, it’s not exactly a rational urge, because we don’t need to do it to survive. But we are perhaps thousands of years away from having it bred out of us—if it ever can be. Denying our instinct and desire to be outdoors hunting for fish, removes us farther from our natural world. The more folks are so removed, the less they will be advocates for fish and fish habitat conservation.

De Leeuw challenges us to provide ethical justification for angling. Having a group of concerned anglers that directly embrace and indirectly protect the resource is without a doubt an important justification. It’s no coincidence that many, and should I say most, conservation advocates that put the needs or the resource before the needs of those targeting it are light-tackle anglers and saltwater flyfishermen.

In short, to deny our place as hunters on the top of the food chain is unhealthy and unnatural, and prohibiting the symbolic gesture of catch-and-release fishing, and taking the sport out of the fight by prohibiting the use of light tackle would have far greater consequences then the temporary discomfort and subsequent release mortality of a fish that has a brain the size of a pea and forgets the entire incident 30-seconds after it has happened.

(A shorter version of this article was printed in FFSW magazine)

A proposal to save Montauk Light threatens The Point and adjacent beaches
By Capt. John McMurray

Located at the eastern end of Long Island, NY, the Montauk Lighthouse is synonymous with fall-run striped bass, bluefish and false albacore blitzes. It is frequently called “the Mecca” of the northeast surf-fishing community. However, this all may change in the near future. Because of the continued erosion and instability of Turtle Hill where the lighthouse sits, the Army Corps of Engineers (ACOE) is proposing the construction of a massive stone revetment designed to protect the bluffs from erosion and the possibility a “73-year design” storm. The plan involves boulders, to be placed in a wall, 840 feet long and 40 feet thick.

Many folks believe that the height, length and overall distance that the proposed structure will project out into ocean will have a significant effect on the current wave patterns, near shore ocean currents, and sediment flow dynamics, all of which make Montauk Point the world class fishery that it is. Thus the fishing, particularly the surfcasting at the point where many a bass-blitz has taken place may suffer both in the short and long term.

More erosion?

The evidence is overwhelming that these types of revetment structures lead to accelerated erosion of adjoining shore lines. Montauk beaches have been getting smaller over the years because prior revetment projects stopped the natural erosion material that should be replenishing those beaches. In time, surfcasters will likely loose beach access west and north of the point because of the accelerated down-drift beach erosion. As the sand disappears and the water encroaches anglers will have less of a platform from which to surf-cast from. More than likely, the ACOE will advocate their standard “beach nourishment” (dredge and fill) projects to mitigate. Currently, in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast, stripers avoid some “re-nourished” beaches because the sediment the ACOE uses does not match the natural beach, thus causing chronic turbidity and acute lack of visibility. If stripers can’t see the bait, they can’t feed. These projects also dramatically reduce beach invertebrate populations as small critters like sandeels and various worm and crustacean species that feed the bottom of the food chain get washed off with the beach or get smothered by fill.

Setting a precedent:

In lieu of “beach nourishment,” many anglers believe that the ACOE could approve more armoring on the affected beaches, which could make the beaches, and access, disappear. One need look no farther than Montauk’s North Shore community of Culloden. At the time when the ACOE was planning the extension of the jetties at Montauk Harbor, residents along Culloden shores were given assurances from Corps staff that little or no change would result to the beaches west of the project. Local residents know well of the “unintended consequences” that have resulted in extreme down-drift erosion and loss of beach, which forced home owners to install shore hardening structures to protect their property from being swallowed by the sea. The combination of accelerated down drift erosion along with wave refraction from shore hardening structures have created an industrial shoreline that is inaccessible to anglers.

Approval of such a high-profile shore hardening project will send the wrong message to waterfront owners across Long Island. The project has potential to set a precedent and encourage private land owners to construct similar structures. Ultimately the revetment approach will only lead to more and more challenging and expensive coastal structures. Up and down the Atlantic coast, almost every ACOE project such as this one has proved repeatedly that shore hardening is a short-sighted, and often a careless and inefficient strategy that interferes in natural processes and more-times-than-not makes erosion worse. The littoral flow in Long Island moves from east to west. Trap the sand on one beach and inevitably one gets starved of sand down-drift.

Safety considerations:

Furthermore, some contend that the new structure will be at a dangerous and steep angle making fishing Montauk Point from the structure considerably more difficult. With the reduced angle of the proposed structure, and having it 22 feet seaward, the same surges which now make casting and footing difficult, will be even worse. With a smooth ramp that has less gravitational resistance on the swells, they could travel further landward, so the fishermen will have to cast from further back, and at a lower elevation than before.

Things are projected to be more difficult for those folks fishing from boats as well. There could be substantially more backwash off the new structure that could make boating close to the point where bass-blitzes often take place significantly more dangerous than it is now. A handful of boats capsize there each fall as it is. We can expect quite a bit more of this kind of thing if the ACOE go ahead with the revetment construction.

No guarantee

There is no guarantee that the proposed revetment will prevent further erosion of Turtle Hill in which the famous lighthouse stands. The ocean and especially ocean storms are full of uncertainty and their ability to circumvent and beat mad-made structures is notorious. Prior ACOE attempts so beat back mother nature have been widely known to be ineffective. Tax payer funds would be more wisely spent on a permanent solution.

Moving the lighthouse?

Moving the lighthouse back is an option that some in the angling and surfing communities are advocating. This could provide safety and security for the next 300-plus years with no significant environmental costs and no effect on the fishing. The ACOE contends that this option would be difficult and cost prohibitive, however, other prominent historical lighthouses on the east coast have been safely moved (e.g. Cape Hatteras, NC, Block Island, RI, and two in Cape Cod, MA). In these cases it was decided that, although initially more expensive, moving the lighthouse was the only guaranteed long term solution, and in the end tax-payers would end up saving millions of dollars.

Where we are now

ACOE is currently looking for the next level of congressional authorization for this project. It was included for authorization in the Senate version of the Water Resource Development Act, however not the house version. Summer of 2006 saw committee sessions working to reconcile the different versions of the bill but this effort was unsuccessful. Fall of 2006 saw a continuation of efforts to get a bill sent up for vote but more than likely, no action will be taken until 2007. Even if the bill is passed it still has to go through the appropriations process. There is also the issue of the ACOE reform legislation pending in the halls of congress. If the stronger version in enacted, projects like the one at Montauk Point could be subject to a new review process, possible revision and/or outright cancellation. Whatever the case, there will be ample opportunity to comment on the proposed revetment as well as alternative projects. Montauk anglers would be wise to pay attention to the process and write letters to their local legislators voicing their concerns.

Montauk’s congressman Timothy Bishop has yet to take a position on this issue. Readers can call and/or write him to voice their concerns: email: nick.holder@mail.house.gov, (631)696-6500, (631)696-4520 (fax).

By Capt. John McMurray

How was your bluefin season this year? I hope better than mine as I didn’t see one, much less hook one. Last year my boat probably saw over 50 of these extraordinary fish, and I wasn’t alone. Many northeast and mid-Atlantic flyfishers took advantage of the spectacular run of school bluefin tuna we had just a few miles from the shore last year. Why these fish suddenly appeared remains a mystery. However, some scientists believe that the abundance of small fish were spawned by year classes born in 94 that are just maturing.

But why then did we not see them again in the same sort of numbers this year? No data exists on these school bluefin at the moment, and the abundance could be a result of the redistribution of the forage base, or simply changing water temps, but conditions in 2006 really weren’t much different from 2005’s.

Currently, there is a tagging study underway which will track movements of juvenile bluefin. But, the question still remains: Will those school bluefin make it to spawning size before harvest depletes their numbers? Sadly, I am not optimistic. I suspect those fish went to the Mediterranean over the winter as some studies suggest school bluefin do. And I suspect they were they scooped up by the gigantic fleet of European purse-seine boats out there? This belief is reinforced by the fact that I saw hundreds of these fish blitzing just a couple hundred yards from the beach while vacationing in Maderia, an Island off of Portugal, last January. These were the same size fish we had here. Unfortunately, there are no commercial or recreational size limits on tuna in Europe, and while there are quotas, there is little to no enforcement.

Despite the abundance of school bluefin we saw last year, that may or may not have made it to 2007, The International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT) estimates that Atlantic Bluefin populations are at 10 to 20% of what they were in the early 70’s. Many scientists believe that unless some changes are made quickly, Atlantic bluefin could be headed toward extinction.

There are solutions to the problems bluefin are facing, but whether or not the managing authorities have the backbone to ensure this species doesn’t go the way of the passenger pigeon is in question. Bluefin are perhaps the most sought after fish in the ocean because of their unusually high commercial value in the Japanese sushi market (some fish can sell for upwards of $100K!). Therefore it’s no surprise that bluefin, specifically the Atlantic stock, are in serious decline.

There are two distinct populations of Atlantic Bluefin: A western stock that spawns in the Gulf of Mexico and an eastern stock which reproduces in the Mediterranean Sea. Back in the early 80’s ICCAT established the longitude 45 degrees west line, which runs down the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, as the boundary between the eastern and western management zones. That decision was based on the best science available at the time, which suggested that the two stocks were separate and rarely intermingled.

Stock assessments have indicated for some time that the western stock is in serious decline, but that the eastern stock, while still waning, is doing better. Today ICCAT limits the annual tuna catch in the western Atlantic to 3,000-tons while allowing an astounding 32,000-ton quota in the Eastern Atlantic.

A report published in the journal Nature last spring emphasized that the two “separate” stocks frequently ignore the longitude 45W boundary and intermingle regularly at productive feeding grounds. Thus, bluefin from the North American waters, where fishing regulations are strict and quotas relatively small, are crossing the ocean to areas where quotas are higher and regulations are often ignored. This raises serious questions about whether ICCAT quotas protect vulnerable western bluefin that cross the imaginary 45W line into eastern waters to feed.

The US must convince ICCAT to move the current east/west boundary east, toward European waters where the mixing occurs. That would protect some of the largest tuna with the greatest reproductive potential. Closing productive feeding grounds where the two stocks mix may also be warranted. Furthermore, the US needs to insist on tighter quotas in the Eastern Atlantic. Trade sanctions and other economic measures could be implemented by the US to push eastern countries to end routine violations of size and catch limits by their fleets.

That would be the first thing we could do to protect declining stocks. But, there is quite a bit more we could do on the domestic front. Stay tuned and I’ll cover some other aspects in a future blog.

ENVIROS, ANGLERS AND THEIR CHILDISH FIGHTS
By Capt. John McMurray

The bickering and mud-slinging between angling and environmental groups has been going on for quite some time. It boiled to a head about 5-years ago, mainly because of a Natural Resource Defense Council (NRDC) report recommending 20% of all waters be closed to any type of fishing. Yes, it was preposterous recommendation being that the 20% they were recommending was the only water anyone really fished, and since then the environmental community has backed down, and the moderate ones have been trying to work with angling groups and those “moderate” angling groups have been receptive (eg. The Menhaden Matter coalition). Of course, working together has indeed been somewhat difficult when angling groups are comparing environmental groups to terrorists in their fundraising letters and enviro groups, in many instances, are publicly blaming anglers for the bulk of overfishing.

Fortunately, the debate over access and marine protected areas ignited by the NRDC report 5 years ago has largely subsided, although there is still much disagreement. But, there is another issue that has arisen creating more “hate-and-loathing,” mud slinging, and ridiculous rhetoric from both sides of the fence. The argument is over summer flounder (what we call fluke), and despite the fact that most flyrodders don’t target them, how things turn out with this fish will have large repercussions on how all sportfish will be managed in the future.

The Magnuson Stevens Act requires that fisheries management plans end overfishing and rebuild overfished stocks within 10-years and that all management plans have at least a 50% chance of achieving their goal. That simply is not happening with fluke because managers have refused to make the difficult but necessary decisions required. And so, there is no other choice but to cut harvest back substantially in 2007 and this will undoubtedly have a negative impact on the party-boat industry in NY and NJ. That’s not good and I feel for those fishing charter captains that will suffer as a result. But, what is worse is the fact that some angling industry groups have joined forces with the commercial fishing industry and are exploiting the bad news by using the fluke situation to help promote efforts to remove the most effective conservation provisions from the Magnuson Act, an action which, if successful, would permit overfishing even of badly depleted stocks to go on indefinitely. The 10-year rebuilding time frame provision in the Magnuson Act may not be popular in some circles, but it assures that managers will rebuild stocks despite political pressure to continue overfishing.

But those conservation minded anglers like me (and probably you because you are taking the time to read this) who support the existing rebuilding time frames and real success rates are being labeled “environmental extremists,” “animal rights supporters” or “want to take you off the water.” That’s simply not true, and claims to this effect are cynical attempts by members of the angling industry to drive a wedge between the “environmental” community and anglers and to use that rift to raise more money for their own self-serving purposes. To throw environmentalists into the category of “extremists” or “animal rights advocates” is as wrong as PETA labeling an angler a “bloodthirsty killer.”

Yes, there are most certainly environmental extremists out there, but they’re the exception, not the rule, just as some angling industry groups that disguise themselves as representatives of individual recreational fishermen are one extreme of the angling community, and don’t represent the average conservation-minded angler like you and I.

Of course enviros are not squeaky clean in any sense of the word. Those regular readers of this site know that I’ve been steadfast in defending the enviro community in the past; however, I must admit that I continue to get more and more annoyed with them. In many cases, they fail to make a distinction between Anglers and commercial fishermen. For example, a Type 2 MPA that prevents bottom trawling–or perhaps all bottom fishing in order to protect deep-water species, but permits low-impact angling activities like catch and release could be a win-win situation for both sides, and might make the rare occasion when a complete closure is justified more palatable to anglers. Instead, there seems to be little effort to acknowledge the very real difference between gear types, and at times the enviro groups seem to go out of their way to poke a stick in the eye of the angling community (the Pew-financed paper emphasizing the impact of recreational fishing on fish stocks being a perfect example). Most anglers in the know are fully aware that they have an impact of fish stocks, but releasing an inflammatory report that drastically overstates this fact was just a bad move on the enviros side.

And, with the current fluke issue, enviros should consider trading a couple of more rebuilding years–which may well be biologically necessary anyway–for a lessened chance of weakening the Magnuson Act. If they remain too dogmatic, and don’t buy a compromise, they can end up screwing up things and pushing the mid-Atlantic angling community farther toward the extremist anti-enviro camp.

By taking some of the actions they do, which are perhaps aimed at the extreme and irrational branch of the angling community, the enviro groups anger all anglers while needlessly provoking the angling industry extremists into reaction. This sort of thing is poisoning the attitudes of the angling community as a whole. None of us–the enviros, the rational anglers or the resource– will benefit if it continues, yet I don’t expect anyone’s behavior to change. I’m not sure whether it is arrogance or just a strategic blind spot on the enviros’ behalf; but, if they don’t make a conscious effort to reach out to their natural allies among the sportsmen and if the sportsmen then, all of us are going to lose.

With out a doubt, sportsmen have historically been and continue to be the most effective leaders of the conservation movement, and enviros should acknowledge that. No one’s rhetoric, whether it comes from the envro side or the angling side should allow this to change. Stop bickering kids! Put the darn egos and ideology aside for the time being and think practically. Working together on the important fisheries conservation issues that could very possibly result in what the both of us want: Clean water and more fish in the sea.