Pending Shark Regs

[Reeltitanium]

The article below is both informative and misleading. The total number of boats fishing for sharks on a "directed" liscense is ZERO In addition the Gulf Coast has been "done" for years. This leaves us with the North East & South East and realistic numbers would suggest that the North East is a virtually non-existent Black Tip population. All this adds up to the only real directed commercial shark fishing area being the South East from N. Carolina to Florida. Anyhow here's the Mark Sampson article with just one other point of interest being Mark Sampson is a reformed commercial fisherman turned charter captain.

OCEAN CITY -- A couple weeks ago I reported some information about swordfish that came out of a National Marine Fisheries Service meeting I had recently attended.

The meeting was set up to allow those in attendance the opportunity to review, discuss and comment on some new fishery issues that have come along concerning billfish, sharks and swordfish. The news about swordfish was pretty good; it indicated that after many years of struggle, the fishery had finally reached a level that could be considered "recovered."

Unfortunately, the only good news I can report about sharks is that there wasn't any discussion about new regulations that will directly affect the average recreational shark fisherman here in the mid-Atlantic region. Unfortunately, there's a lot of news about certain shark populations that is about as bad as ever.

The most noteworthy news stems from results of a recent stock assessment that prompted NMFS to determine that the sandbar shark is being "overfished" and that "overfishing" is occurring. This means that overfishing has brought the sandbar population down to a point that it cannot reproduce fast enough to maintain its numbers at an acceptable level, and that amount of fishing pressure continues today.

While some sandbar sharks are caught and kept by recreational anglers, the majority of the take comes from commercial fishery.

U.S. commercial fishermen who specifically target sharks hold what is known as a Directed Shark Permit. Most of this commercial fishing occurs from New Jersey south and into the Gulf of Mexico, and usually involves the use of bottom longline gear. Those holding Directed Shark Permits are limited to a 4,000-pound trip limit of dressed (head and guts removed) sharks. They fish on a quota system and the fishery is monitored so that once the quota is caught the fishery is closed until the next period.

At least that's the way it's supposed to work -- in the beginning of this year south Atlantic fishermen caught 230.8 percent of their quota before "somebody" woke up and finally closed the fishery. That's a very tragic "OOOOPs!"

Landings by directed shark fishermen are primarily sandbar and blacktip sharks, the meat of which often ends up in supermarkets as steakfish and the fins go off to Asian markets to become sharkfin soup. With sandbar sharks now listed as being overfished, NMFS is required to provide new regulations that would end the overfishing of this species and restore their populations to acceptable numbers.

This has prompted them to propose a drastic cut (something like 70 percent) in the amount of sandbar sharks that can be landed by U.S. commercial shark fishermen.

With sandbar sharks making up about 50 percent of the take of the directed shark industry, such a drastic reduction in quota would effectively put that industry out of business. As a result, discussion has moved in the direction of a "buy out" program whereby the government would pay Directed Shark Permit holders to retire their permits and effectively bring an end to this commercial fishery altogether.

Quite frankly I think the end of this fishery is long overdue and possibly too late. Decades ago NMFS made a big mistake when they suggested that commercial fishermen start targeting sharks that were, at the time, considered an "underutilized fishery."

Since then it's become painfully clear that sharks (particularly the "large coastal" species such as the sandbars) cannot withstand even moderate commercial fishing in the way most other fish can. This is evident in the fact that, according to NMFS, even with the proposed cuts in sandbar landings it's estimated that it will take 70 years before their population can be rebuilt to sustainable levels.

As if that wasn't bad enough, another report estimates that even though dusky sharks are currently on the no take Prohibited Species List, it's going to take somewhere between 100 and 400 years for them to recover from past years of overfishing.

So it's good news for swordfish and sword fishermen, and bad news for sharks and shark fishermen. I guess one out of two ain't bad.

[eppefour]

I like the idea of nuying the permits. They could pay these guys not to fish like we pay large corporate farmers not to grow crops. At least some little guy who busts his ass all year could get some of the government handout. Of course what we really need is to force the Japanese not to strip the oceans