Story Regarding the Draggers

[amarshall]

Email I just got...

Our fisheries management is so f*cked up, it's comical.

Did I tell you about the dragger on Sunday? So I see this dragger hauling back so I steam up literally 75 feet behind him. He’s got an enormous net full of fish. They walk back and take a look at the fish and 10 seconds later pull the draw string and at least 5,000lb of herring get dumped in to the water. You see they can’t keep but 2,000lbs of herring a day right now so if they are dragging for whiting and the net comes up full of herring they just dump it all dead. It was all dead. Herring don’t survive getting beat up in the net. Saw it all drift down on the fish finder. So we tried fishing over the dumped herring and nothing but dogs. We could see dogs swimming all over.

What a waste to dump herring like that. Right after they dumped they let the net right back out. “Let’s try again.”

So half hour later all the birds were still there so we drove back over the area and there were herring floating dead all over the place. Birds were swimming amongst the fish and were so full they stopped eating. In 5 minutes we dip netted about 50lbs of fresh herring.

The waste going on out there is beyond silly.

[Block and Tackle]

I was a witness to a very similar event this past weekend. Could have been the same incident but I doubt it. This goes on all day long. I had a conversation yesterday with someone that works for a local dragger. He is a very level headed guy and said "Well what do you want them to do. Rules are rules." It really is pretty comical. Hate to see anyone go out of business but how can you have rules of weight and quotas on a non-selective type of fishing.

[amarshall]

Ted that email is from our mutual friend.

[Bud Man]

You Guys should get as much video as you can, public out cry is the only way these things get legs. It is another wedge between commercial and recreational, whom together need to have common ground approach to fisheries management. Unfortunately Common Sense and NMFS go together like oil and water and there solution lately is to try and make it a marine sanctuary's and exclude everyone from it.

The comm's know they are wasting a resource, but is the only option shutting them out of those areas or is there some other way.

I'm not familiar with whats going on in New England, So I'm not sure what options would be available. I do know that killing 5,000 to 10,000lbs of herring to get a trip to market of whiting is incredibly wasteful.

Peace

[storm petrel]

What do you you when you reel in your sword bait and find a 25lb sword pup who's swallowed the hook and died? Throw it over the side, of course. Right?

[Col. Kurtz]

Depressing...

[LurkerCharters]

I would like to know what that dragger capt was seeing on his sounder, herring look very distinct on a screen, much different than whiting. Seems to me that a good fishermen should know what he is marking and targeting, I'm pretty sure they are relying on their sounders to judge what they are towing over. I don't think nmfs is solely to blame for much of the waste occurring in our comm fisheries. The draggers and trawlers need to take some responsibilty to limit bycatch.