Sandtiger
01-13-2007, 06:44 AM
Spiny dogfish threaten harvests
Posted by the Asbury Park Press on 01/13/07
The protection of spiny dogfish in mid-Atlantic waters is the most glaring example of fisheries mismanagement in the system today.
These voracious little sharks, that are blessed by environmentalists and biologists, now probably number in the millions, and they are literally stripping the ocean of marine life smaller than themselves.
Nature will correct the imbalance, even if fisheries management does not, but it will take several more years. Meanwhile, the young of valuable species, such as fluke, sea bass, whiting, ling, porgies and blackfish, will be decimated, and fishermen will suffer in reduced harvest.
These sharks are two- to four-foot killing machines. They are carrying out a reign of marine terror that stretches from shallow, inshore waters to deep waters sometimes as far as 75 miles from shore.
There was a day when spiny dogfish were not particularly interested in lures and baits such as green crabs were ignored. Today the greyhounds are eating everything that even looks like food.
Capt. Jimmy Elliott, skipper of the Miss Belmar Princess from Belmar Marine Basin, said there have been days recently when a string of mackerel has been attacked by hordes of dogfish as the catch is reeled toward the surface.
"They strip off the mackerel and then hit the teasers," he said. "You end up catching a couple of dogfish, and sometimes they are three- to four-feet long."
Elliott has had his troubles with the sea conditions, weather, and spiny dogfish of late, but Friday was different.
"The water temperature dropped three degrees overnight," he said. "It was 46 degrees out off Jones Inlet, where we've been fishing. I stopped on a carpet of mackerel this morning that hit right away."
Elliott said anglers had 80-quart coolers half-full of mackerel by 12:30 p.m. and they continued to add fish through the afternoon.
"Thursday was poor fishing," Elliott said. "We caught some mackerel, but the dogfish killed us. We caught triple-header dogfish; you couldn't keep them off the hooks. Wherever you stopped, within two minutes you had dogfish on."
Elliott said that when he found the mackerel Friday he was able to stay on a drift for a mile and a quarter: "We just kept banging away."
The Miss Belmar Princess fished near the N.B. Buoy, and was joined on the grounds by the Dorothy B and Brooklyn VI out of New York.
"We've been out there all week, picking a few mackerel, trying to avoid the dogfish," he said. "Today was the best fishing of the week."
The sad part of the spiny dogfish problem is the impact the predator ultimately has on recreational and commercial fishermen. Biologists fail to take into account the enormous toll the shark biomass takes on creatures below it on the food chain.
Instead, when the numbers of other species are not recovering or are going backward, the scientists turn to fishermen for cutbacks. They cannot mandate that the dogfish take less; so they make the fishermen take less.
Fisheries managers and biologists increasingly say there are unknowns in their equations. With weakfish and winter flounders, for instance, they say they cannot account for losses in recruitment.
This is not some journey into the world of quantum chromodynamics. This is elementary stuff: you have 100,000 spiny dogfish, they each eat 2 pounds of juvenile sea bass, and you have lost 200,000 pounds of baby bass.
The next day they consume 200,000 pounds of juvenile winter flounders and the following day 200,000 pounds of baby bergalls, and so on. The loss of marine life to these living In-Sink-Erators every year is awful, but, if the biomass of spiny dogfish can be calculated, then their annual toll can be determined.
At-sea observations of fishermen — commercial and recreational — verify that the spiny dogfish is not endangered, threatened or even slightly menaced. There is no reason to further protect these fish.
U.S. commercial fishermen could harvest a large portion of the present biomass, save countless tons of the young of more valuable species, and make money in the process. That would be wise fisheries management.
Posted by the Asbury Park Press on 01/13/07
The protection of spiny dogfish in mid-Atlantic waters is the most glaring example of fisheries mismanagement in the system today.
These voracious little sharks, that are blessed by environmentalists and biologists, now probably number in the millions, and they are literally stripping the ocean of marine life smaller than themselves.
Nature will correct the imbalance, even if fisheries management does not, but it will take several more years. Meanwhile, the young of valuable species, such as fluke, sea bass, whiting, ling, porgies and blackfish, will be decimated, and fishermen will suffer in reduced harvest.
These sharks are two- to four-foot killing machines. They are carrying out a reign of marine terror that stretches from shallow, inshore waters to deep waters sometimes as far as 75 miles from shore.
There was a day when spiny dogfish were not particularly interested in lures and baits such as green crabs were ignored. Today the greyhounds are eating everything that even looks like food.
Capt. Jimmy Elliott, skipper of the Miss Belmar Princess from Belmar Marine Basin, said there have been days recently when a string of mackerel has been attacked by hordes of dogfish as the catch is reeled toward the surface.
"They strip off the mackerel and then hit the teasers," he said. "You end up catching a couple of dogfish, and sometimes they are three- to four-feet long."
Elliott has had his troubles with the sea conditions, weather, and spiny dogfish of late, but Friday was different.
"The water temperature dropped three degrees overnight," he said. "It was 46 degrees out off Jones Inlet, where we've been fishing. I stopped on a carpet of mackerel this morning that hit right away."
Elliott said anglers had 80-quart coolers half-full of mackerel by 12:30 p.m. and they continued to add fish through the afternoon.
"Thursday was poor fishing," Elliott said. "We caught some mackerel, but the dogfish killed us. We caught triple-header dogfish; you couldn't keep them off the hooks. Wherever you stopped, within two minutes you had dogfish on."
Elliott said that when he found the mackerel Friday he was able to stay on a drift for a mile and a quarter: "We just kept banging away."
The Miss Belmar Princess fished near the N.B. Buoy, and was joined on the grounds by the Dorothy B and Brooklyn VI out of New York.
"We've been out there all week, picking a few mackerel, trying to avoid the dogfish," he said. "Today was the best fishing of the week."
The sad part of the spiny dogfish problem is the impact the predator ultimately has on recreational and commercial fishermen. Biologists fail to take into account the enormous toll the shark biomass takes on creatures below it on the food chain.
Instead, when the numbers of other species are not recovering or are going backward, the scientists turn to fishermen for cutbacks. They cannot mandate that the dogfish take less; so they make the fishermen take less.
Fisheries managers and biologists increasingly say there are unknowns in their equations. With weakfish and winter flounders, for instance, they say they cannot account for losses in recruitment.
This is not some journey into the world of quantum chromodynamics. This is elementary stuff: you have 100,000 spiny dogfish, they each eat 2 pounds of juvenile sea bass, and you have lost 200,000 pounds of baby bass.
The next day they consume 200,000 pounds of juvenile winter flounders and the following day 200,000 pounds of baby bergalls, and so on. The loss of marine life to these living In-Sink-Erators every year is awful, but, if the biomass of spiny dogfish can be calculated, then their annual toll can be determined.
At-sea observations of fishermen — commercial and recreational — verify that the spiny dogfish is not endangered, threatened or even slightly menaced. There is no reason to further protect these fish.
U.S. commercial fishermen could harvest a large portion of the present biomass, save countless tons of the young of more valuable species, and make money in the process. That would be wise fisheries management.