Day Two: Maze of regulations challenges industry

By RICHARD DEGENER Staff Writer | Posted: Tuesday, December 15, 2009 | 0 comments



Dana Christine mate Mike Lohr displays a 20-pound bluefish caught during a morning run in October off Long Beach Island. Dana Christine Capt. Kevin Wark says he has survived by finding fish where others could not.


* Wark, 46, of Barnegat Light, steers the Dana Christine to fishing grounds about 15 miles from Long Beach Island. Wark comes from a family of bay clammers.
* Staff photo by Dale Gerhard Dana Christine Capt. Kevin Wark spends time with his wife, Cindy, and daughter Dana Christine as she shows off her new flute for school music class. Wark, a gill net fisherman from Barnegat Light, catches bluefish that become $11.95 dinner specials in the South.

Kevin Wark rises at 4:30 a.m., and an hour later he leaves the Viking Village fishing dock in Barnegat Light.

The sun hasn’t even risen yet as Wark, captain of the 42-foot Dana Christine, heads southeast, watching as the depth finder shows the water getting deeper and deeper.

Experience takes him 15 miles offshore before the depth suddenly decreases from 80 feet to 57 feet. Wark slows the Dana Christine at an underwater mountain of sand known as Barnegat Ridge. Experience tells him fish would be there on this October day.

New Jersey’s commercial fishermen are adapting to what fish they can catch as regulations increase and the ocean changes. The emphasis on regulations will lead to job loss in New Jersey’s $1 billion-per-year industry. Unfortunately, all that government attention has not translated into a better safety record; commercial fishing remains the most dangerous occupation.

Wark, who grew up in Ship Bottom and came from a family of bay clammers, has survived by finding fish where others could not, and finding them at the right time. But he has to use every skill he has learned to keep ahead of the growing number of government regulations. He and other fishermen have been barred from catching fish such as sturgeon and shad because of fish-management rules. He can no longer let his nets soak overnight, because they could affect bottlenose dolphins. He just took classes about how to avoid sea turtles.

Wark, 46, of Barnegat Light, began fishing in 1982 and bought his own boat in 1986. All he had to do back then was purchase a state net-fishing license. There were no federal permits nor any fishery management plans yet for bluefish, weakfish, monkfish, croaker, sturgeon, bunker, spiny dogfish sharks or any other species that could land in his net. He just went fishing and caught what he caught.

Now, almost every fish species has a management plan. He used to catch 100,000 pounds of weakfish per year, but now he is allowed only 100 pounds per day. He blames fishery management plans that allowed the ocean to grow too many spiny dogfish sharks and striped bass, which prey on baby weakfish.

The days of just throwing a net overboard at any time, at any place, are gone. With all the regulations, all the limits, Wark knows he has to be on the top of his game to make a living.

On this day, bluefish are in season, and if Wark can find them he can make a paycheck for himself and his mate, Mike Lohr, 42, of Barnegat Light.

On the first set of the net this day, nature is offering few clues on where the big bluefish are. Wark is not above taking clues from bird plays and fish-oil slicks. Later in the day, he would let a brown pelican lead him to a school of bunker fish. He also studies the multicolored blips on his electronic fish-finder to get an idea of what is swimming below the boat.

Wark sees some blips on his electronic fish finder that he thinks are bluefish migrating south along the ridge. Experience tells him the blips are bluefish, but in fishing, nothing is certain. Wark is about to test his hunch.

His first mate, who has been fishing with Wark since 1995, waits at the doorway of the cabin for the word. It finally comes.

“OK, let her go,” Wark shouts.

Lohr throws out a buoy, and 1,300 feet of gill net starts following it into the water, lead line sinking one end to the bottom and corks keeping the other end afloat.

Wark’s experience and the blips on the fish-finder may suggest there will be bluefish, but until the net comes up, he can’t be sure.

For fishermen, the moment when a gill net, trawl, dredge, pot or long line of silver hooks breaks the water is one of pure anticipation. This moment determines their pay. It’s a measure of their success.

Wark has a reputation for finding the fish when the market prices are at their peak.

“I kind of know where they are year to year, but it kind of changes a little every year. That’s the whole game, to track them down and be the first to get them. After that, the price starts going down,” he says.

Plenty of fish

Environmental groups keep announcing the ocean is out of fish. A group of Canadian scientists made headlines a couple years ago when they announced in the magazine Science that all species being fished for today would be gone by 2048. Wark reads the headlines, and continues catching fish. Wark says he is not “making it rich,” but he is making a decent living.

Fishing income, as one can imagine, can vary greatly from year to year. Wark says gillnet captains, the boat owners, make between $50,000 and $100,000 per year. A crewman makes from $25,000 to $75,000, which is good money, but it comes with a lot of hard work and a good deal of risk.

Wark sometimes supplements his income with government work. Last April, he was hired by the government to catch sturgeon off the Delaware coast for a scientific study on the rare, prehistoric-looking fish.

“They said we’d catch seven of them. We caught 51, including two females with caviar (eggs). They wanted to put them on the threatened list and we showed they were prevalent,” Wark says.

Today the goal is big blues offshore and then a trip inshore for croakers.

“Let’s see what we did,” Wark says as Lohr retrieves the buoy line and the hydraulic reel starts bringing in the net.

As the net comes up, big blues — 20-pounders — begin appearing, stuck by their gills with their heads through the diamond mesh. Wark begins picking them from the net, noting the direction they were heading before getting stuck in the net.

“They were all moving south,” he says. “See how their heads were going that way?”

The Dana Christine landed 10,000 pounds of bluefish the day before and would catch 2,700 pounds this day by 9 a.m. before switching nets and heading inshore to land croakers. Wark says it all goes in cycles.

“When my dad was a kid, there were no bluefish. Somebody would catch one and everybody would come to see it,” Wark says.

Under the government regulations of today, Wark says such a low point in a fish cycle would often lead to a moratorium on catches with no guarantee they could ever be harvested again. Wark says a better understanding of cycles is needed.

Most of the species Wark catches are regulated by management plans drafted by the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council and the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission. Some were approved in the 1980’s but others are more recent. The Atlantic croaker plan only dates to 2005. The regulations use size limits, gear restrictions, seasons, quotas and other methods to reduce the catch. A new round of regulations is coming and the Department of Labor predicts they will be a factor in reducing fishing jobs by 16 percent over the next seven years.

“My first job was working for a fourth-generation fisherman off (Cape) Hatteras. I remember once he pointed to the ocean and said, ‘Someday, they’re going to turn it into a museum.’ Well, the ocean is not a museum. You have to manage it but allow use of it,” Wark says.

The numerous openings and closing of fisheries, meanwhile, ruin marketing efforts, Wark says. Markets often turn to imports to replace a domestic supply that cannot be assured. Since 1976, when the government first started managing fishing, the number of regulators has quadrupled, while seafood imports went from less than 28 percent to 82 percent.

“If there’s no fluke, they’ll buy Chilean sea bass. The regulations, I think, will eventually overrun the industry and it will all fall in on itself,” Wark says.

Dock wants croakers

Wark unloads his fish at Viking Village, which packs them in ice and sends them to fresh fish markets in Boston, New York, Philadelphia and Maryland. Viking Village is one of the few docks that supplies ice to fishermen for free.

Wark’s catch of bluefish on Oct. 1 is worth 40 cents per pound, but its value will increase exponentially the closer it gets to a dinner plate. The fish, while hardly as valued as bluefin tuna, still will sell for $11.95 as a dinner special.

Before Wark leaves, the dock sometimes gives him an idea what fish are needed. On this day, they want croakers.

“They like muddy bottom. You have to stay off the lumps,” Wark says.

He heads inshore and ends up off Harvey Cedars in 71 feet of water when the fish-finder suggests croakers. Instead of setting the net out in a straight line, he has to circle the croakers.

The red-headed Lohr, a man of few words, has to yell out six of them as the net plays out. Each shot of net is about 50 fathoms, and Wark needs to know when each one plays out to determine the size of the circle.

“One,” Lohr yells as the first shot of net flies off the stern. “Two,” he shouts at the net reel whirrs.

Wark guns the Dana Christine as the six shots go in the water, trying to surround fish he can’t even see.

“Yeah baby,” Wark shouts as the net comes up and a croaker appears. “It’s a good sign.”

The first net pulled aboard brings in about 110 pounds of croaker and a few bunker, an oily fish sold as bait to recreational anglers.

Wark, who like Lohr is a Southern Regional High School graduate, moves to another spot in 40 feet of water, but catches more starfish than croakers.

“It’s a bad sign. Starfish seem to like bad bottom. Unproductive bottom,” Wark says.

Lohr sees a bird play off the beach — birds indicate baitfish, which in turn attract marketable fish.

“Let’s check them out,” Wark replies as they head over.

Some days, Wark says, they have “to scratch together” a number of small sets to make a day of it. Other days, the net is full of fish: “One time we had so many bunker they started towing the boat. The pelicans are really good at finding the bunker for you.”

Wark is not against fishing regulations. He says they helped bring back striped bass and fluke, although he says big cutbacks on weakfish harvests did nothing. He said that may have been “due to a perfect storm” of problems where spiny dogfish and striped bass got to their highest levels.

“I’m all for moderation. I don’t like knee-jerk fisheries management where they do nothing and then do too much. We do need some regulations on sizes to make sure we have some spawners,” Wark says.

A pelican suddenly dives into the water.

“Keep an eye on that pelican, Mike,” Wark shouts.

It could be a sign of bunker. Viking Village wants some bunker, so they decide to try it even though they have the wrong net on the reel. Bunkers are great at avoiding getting caught, especially in daylight.

“When you need them, you can’t get them. When you don’t want them, you get them,” Wark says.

It’s a much quicker circle this time to try to snare the quick-swimming bunker.

“We got ’em, Cap,” Lohr yells.

“That pelican gave them away,” Wark says.

“Yeah he did,” says Lohr.

But it isn’t to be. Most of the bunker get away. They plan to come back the next day with a different net.

They head in at 4:30 p.m. with 2,700 pounds of bluefish at 40 cents per pound, 625 pounds of croakers at $1 per pound and 30 pounds of butterfish at $1.25 per pound. A few smooth dogfish shark, some bunkers and one weakfish round out the catch.

After unloading the catch, cleaning the boat and loading ice for the next day, Lohr heads home to his wife, Suzette, and daughter Heather, 9, while Wark returns to his wife, Cindy, and daughter Dana Christine, 10, a girl who has a boat named after her.

“How did you do?” Cindy asks as Wark gets home at 6 p.m. to the smell of dinner cooking on the stove.

It’s the first thing she asks him every night.

“He always seems to time it to get here at dinner,” Cindy says.

Cindy is happy he is home. She worries, especially as colder weather arrives. One time she got a call that his emergency beacon, designed to activate when a boat sinks, had gone off. It was a false alarm due to icing and 40-knot winds.

Wark and Lohr fish until the dead of winter, when there is no fishery for the gill-net boats.

“The winter comes and we stand around making nets and wishing we had something to catch,” Wark says.

They did on this day. It was good day. They made an honest day’s pay and nobody got hurt.

Contact Richard Degener:

609-463-6711

RDegener@pressofac.com
http://www.pressofatlanticcity.com/f...cc4c03286.html