COMMENTS ON BLUEFIN ABUNDANCE
Marine Conservation - Bluefin Tuna
Dec 16th, 2009 | By Capt. John McMurray | Category: Articles, Conservation, Lead Article
Reel-Time readers… I received the below response from a lifelong tuna fisherman. I thought it was particularly relevant to the CITES discussion taking place here and on other forums. The sender wishes to remain anonymous, but it’s certainly worth a read.
“The plain fact is that the population is not healthy. A healthy population supports a spring recreational fishery off Bimini, when boats from Florida and the Bahamas sight-fish for giants streaming up out of the Gulf and up along the edge of the Bahamas Bank. A healthy population puts the gear of Long Island’s shark anglers in danger, as giants pick up mackerel and other baits drifted in chum slicks during late June and take anglers in center consoles on a Nantucket sleigh ride. A healthy population sees school fish swarm from Cape May to Cape Cod, not just here and there, but throughout that range, throughout the summer. A healthy population supports events such as the United States Atlantic Tuna Tournament in places such as Galilee, Rhode Island in late summer, with big fish taken not at Nomans, or the Mud Hole or Coxe’s Ledge, but within sight of shore at Rosie’s ledge and Nebraska Shoal. A healthy population means that when you least expect it, chumming bluefish on Barnegat Ridge, a pod of giants will crash the party and take off with one of your hooked fish. A healthy population means that charter boats out of Provincetown will have a good chance of scoring multi-giant days throughout the summer. A healthy population has sees the Bay of Fundy and other Canadian waters alive with fish throughout the year, at times so far north that anglers fish amid the remains of icebergs. A healthy population sees giants in Butterfish Hole in the fall, and in the Shinnecock Tuna Hole, and sometimes on the Patchogue Grounds. From October through November, it encourages boats to line up the entire length of the western Mud Hole, and sees anglers on those boats hook up on a fairly regular basis. A healthy population means that, in any given year, most and probably all of those things will happen with predictable regularity.
There won’t be a good run off fish off Chatham, or Cape Ann or the Maine coast, and little more than a spattering somewhere else. There will be fish, and an abundance of fish, throughout their range, appearing off New York and Rhode Island and Massachusetts and Maine and Prince Edward Island at the same time. I can say that because I lived in a time when the fish were abundant. I saw some of what I describe when I was too young to hold onto a bluefin, and I read about other things in the angling press. But except for Bimini, Canada and northern New England, I experienced the rest of it for myself, back in the ’70s, when the decline had already started but the health of the population was still pretty fair.
I fell in love with this fish back then, and until a couple of years ago, when my conscience got the better of me, fished for and caught them every season. And knowing what we lost, I get annoyed when I hear people like (name deleted) essentially maintain that since the fish may not technically be endangered–although we can even debate that point, depending on how we draw the population line trending into the future–we should settle for “badly depleted” and call it ‘good enough”, because somebody can still peel a dollar or two off the bluefin’s hide.
In the days when the bluefin was abundant, there was no market, except maybe ten cents a pound for pet food if you found a buyer in the right mood, and maybe that was why you could regularly see the fish blow through the surface of Cape Cod Bay, and stand on the deck of the Sea Squirrel or one of the other cod boats out of Pt. Judith and watch giants turn the water white somewhere between the breakwall and Coxe’s.
So long as dollars drive the management decision, rather than hard science and the biological needs of the tuna, the species will always teeter at the edge.”
Very well said. For to many it’s all about the money. When are we going to manage the resources (all resources) first so we have something to manage the social problems with? Seems like we always fish and hunt things right to edge of disaster and then it takes longer to correct the problems. I’ve always maintained you can’t buy back a season for any amount of money. Delaying tough regulations only makes things worse.
I fished tuna commercially and recreationally from the late 1950s to 1970. We fished between the Race at Provincetown to Brunswick.
Yes, there were a lot of tuna in that area during that time but, nothing like you describe have described John. The biggest concentrations of fish were offshore – Middle Bank(Stellwagen), Jeffries Ledge and off Boon Island, Maine.
The biggest difference then was that there were many fewer boats. Cape Ann Tuna Club, which I belonged to in the 1960s had about 100 members and a local turnament that usually attracted about 35-40 boats.
Most of the fish caught were 300 to 600 lbs. with a smattering of giants, over 700 lbs. and an occasional school of footballs-under 60 lbs. Most of the fish caught by both rec. and com. boats were sold at prices between 12 and 30 cents/pound. Remember, this was before the advant of Japanese buyers paying outrageous prices for Bluefin.
My best day with keg-ling and harpoon was 5 fish landed and sold in 1961. For a couple years thereafter I fished both com. and rec. but recreationally only after 1965. My best day on Rod and Reel was three fish boated and released.
I remember large schools and many fish but, nothing like you describe in your article and, nothing like what was seen on Stellwagen and east of Chatham during the 1998 and 1999 season.
Last sentence in above reply should have referred to the 2008 and 2009 season in the last sentence; not 1998 and 1999. Sorry for correction
Bill… I didn’t “describe it.” The comments are from a guy who has been tuna fishing for the last 30 years. Sure, your experiences may have been different, and we can argue about you observations vs. his, but the point is this: The science on the sorry state of bluefin stocks is pretty much indisputable. A precipitous decline over the last three decades has been well documented. If it were managed under Magnuson, it would have been shut down a long time ago. Of course, folks who can still make money selling bluefin will argue that there are more bluefin around than ever, when they are threatened with having the demand greatly reduced by a CITES listing. Frankly, I’m far more inclined to believe the science. Are you really arguing that bluefin stocks are as healthy now as they were in “1950 to 1970”???
Capt. John wrote, Quote: Are you really arguing that bluefin stocks are as healthy now as they were in “1950 to 1970”??? Quote
No, of course not. My point was that having fished commercially and recreationally in that timeframe and since -over 50 years – I believe the “anonamous” statements about the abundance of fish then are significantly exagerated. It’s very easy to overestimate when one is doing it anonamously…….
Of course ABFT stocks are sorely reduced – primarilly by overfishing in the eastern Atlantic and Med. However, our western atlantic stocks are being fished for in a very conservative manner – as they should be.
I think that the measures passed by ICCAT should be tried for the coming year. If overfishing continues; then I would not argue about shutting it down even through CITES.
But, give it a chance to work.
My greatest concern is the number of fish being killed by light tackle fishing on this side of the pond. Light tackle anglers taking over an hour to release a dead fish or, breaking off mid-fight leaving a couple hundred yards of line to be trailed by that fish till it dies.
You could say I don’t have a dog in this fight because my age and retirement severely restricts my ability to seek BFT – only two trips in 2009; but that’s not so. I have kids and grandchildren and I do want them to have as much opportunity as I have had.
Bill–
Haven’t spoken to you for a while. Hope that you’re doing well.
I’ve been following this discussion, and have do disagree with you a bit. If you take a close read of the initial comment, it doesn’t say that there were a lot more bluefin years ago in the same places that they are being seen today, but rather that they appeared in a lot more places, simultaneously, than they do today. And that’s a tough point to dispute.
Sure, you can have some intense local abundance on Stellwagon or elsewhere on the coast today–but that will be one of the few places in the Northeast where fish are being caught at that time. When you want to get an idea as to how abundant a species is, you don’t look at where they are, you look at where they’re not–and should be.
As the first post mentions, the USATT–a venerable tournament that once drew boats from New Jersey, New York and New England–had to leave Rhode Island waters because there weren’t enough fish there any more to support the event. It kept moving further north into New Endland until it finally died from a lack of fish. There are still giants taken off Rhode Island and Monauk in the fall, but the numbers are nothing like they were thirty years ago. The same is true for the late season off New Jersey. The first post’s description of the boats that used to line the Mud Hole off New Jersey is also accurate. But it doesn’t happen any more, because the fish aren’t there to support it. Bluefin do come through, but the numbers of big fish just aren’t there.
I learned to tuna fish off Rhode Island, having first strapped on a 16/0 Senator there, so I know first-hand how that fishery has declined. I used to fish the Mud Hole, and no what we lost there. I know that the school bluefin that I could usually troll up from late June into September off Long island have largely disappeared–outside of some scattered fish, the only thing we had this season was one group of fish hanging south of the Chicken Canyon in late summer, and then some action closer in south of Shinnecock/Moriches in the fall. It was intense if you were there, but a shadow of what I knew years ago.
Sometimes our perceptions blur, so before chiming in on the site, I did a little bit of research to see what I could find.
This is what good recreational bluefin fishing in Nova Scotia looked like: http://www.antiquefishingreels.com/photos/fishing/big/MVC-052L.JPG , when a single angler could land 5 giants in a single day.
As far as Rhode Island goes, “A Guide Book to the Marine Fishers of Rhode Island” states “During August, 1949, over 30 tuna weighing up to 779 pounds were taken from the water near the buoy at Rosie’s Ledge off Watch Hill. The United States Atlantic Tuna Tournament, held August 14, 15 and 16, 1956, produced a total of 34 giant bluetins weighing a total of 16,780 pounds.” Thus, the initial poster’s comments seem valid, because you won’t see that sort of thing happening today.
As far as the Western Stock goes, while US and Canadian regulators–and many US and Canadian fishermen–have a stellar record when compared to what goes on elsewhere, the stock is still badly depleted. The decline of the Bimini fishery, described by the first poster, is clear evidence of that, as that fishery was comprised of post-spawn fish migrating up out of the Gulf of Mexico. While a tuna or two is still caught there, the celebration of life that Hemingway, Farrington, Lerner and the like knew in the years immediately following the Second World War no longer exists.
As to the cause, we can all share the blame. Back when I was young, it wasn’t uncommon to see recreationally-caught bluefin displayed, photographed and then dumped on a landfill or towed out to sea, because there was no market, and the “sports” couldn’t conseive of catch and release. As you know, the commercial fishery was minor, because the money just wasn’t there. But once the Japanese market opened, the commercial fishery quickly got out of hand, and recreational anglers embarassed themselves, throwing all ethics to the wind and growing dollar signs in their eyes. I remember the Montauk docks in the ’70s, when tuna buyers with rolls of cash met boats at the dock, and “sportsmen” in 50-foot yachts “had to” sell their bluefin “to pay for the trip.” People said that there were no recreational fishermen in the tuna fleet at that time, and they were largely correct.
Today, we should know better. I have been a bluefin angler since I was old enough to afford my space on a boat. As the population dwindled, I went from catch-and-kill to catch-and-release, and stopped fishing for them altogether after the 2006 season, when I decided that I no longer wanted to kill even the few bluefin that happened to slash at a trolled lure and end up hooked in the eye, or came up from behind and took the hook deep in the throat or gills. We should know that longlining for other species in parts of the Gulf of Mexico at certain times of the year is going to result in bluefin bycatch, and that successful release is problematic given the warm Gulf water. We should know that, at this point in the bluefin’s history, management’s primary obligation should be to future generations of both humans and bluefin, not to short-term economic interests.
Because abundance isn’t anything like it used to be. Even I see that, and I didn’t get into the game until things had already begun to slide downhill, and the first hesitant and inadequate management measures had already been adopted. I suspect many other people would admit to seeing the same decline, if their vision wasn’t obscured by the dollars in their eyes.
Anonymous… I know this based on historical US bluefin catches… Take a look at http://www.reel-time.com/articles/comments-on-bluefin-abundance for some perspective. I’ve yet to hear anyone argue that bluefin are anywhere near what they were pre mid-70’s when the bluefin decline began. The science is very clear on this as well. Bluefin remain at a severely depressed state, despite the welcome localized abundance we’ve experience during the last few years. What’s important is not where the bluefin are, it’s where they aren’t.