Mediums and Giants Done for the Year!

[Fishfinder]

Unfortunately, I think that the honor system of reporting any species of managed fish is flawed. Usually the recreational fishermen as well as the commercial fishermen believes that less reporting going on the better their chances of being able to keep fishing will be. As in the case of the North Carolina gill netters that were supposed to be reporting interactions with sea turtles in the sounds, there were zero reportings of interaction with turtles over the last few years. Amazingly when observers were placed on the boats they logged a good number of interactions with the turtles in a very short period of time. Now that fisheries is severly restricted and just about to go under totally. The same thing was going on here in North Carolina before the mandatory tagging and reporting of recreationally caught bluefin tuna went into effect. But instead of the numbers going up, the numbers of landed bluefin actually went down by a large number. Seems some were saying they were landing more bluefin tuna than they were actually catching. Never new a fisherman to stretch the truth. The mandatory tagging and reporting is the only way to get and keep a good handle on the number of bluefin harvested. With the mandatory reporting by recreational fisherman, and the speed of computers, a close check could have been kept to prevent overages of a large number and a true number of harvested tonage would be in the books instead of having to quess. May be the numbers would work against the recreational quota, but I would believe that it should actually work in the favor of the recreational fishermens quota. At least we would have hard numbers to show and prove the tonage actually caught when ICCAT or any other regulatory arm of the fisheries wanted to shut down or cut the quotas.

Everyone has one! This is just my opinion.

Capt. Joe Shute

[Bluewater Sportfishing]

Unfortunately, I think that the honor system of reporting any species of managed fish is flawed. Usually the recreational fishermen as well as the commercial fishermen believes that less reporting going on the better their chances of being able to keep fishing will be. As in the case of the North Carolina gill netters that were supposed to be reporting interactions with sea turtles in the sounds, there were zero reportings of interaction with turtles over the last few years. Amazingly when observers were placed on the boats they logged a good number of interactions with the turtles in a very short period of time. Now that fisheries is severly restricted and just about to go under totally. The same thing was going on here in North Carolina before the mandatory tagging and reporting of recreationally caught bluefin tuna went into effect. But instead of the numbers going up, the numbers of landed bluefin actually went down by a large number. Seems some were saying they were landing more bluefin tuna than they were actually catching. Never new a fisherman to stretch the truth. The mandatory tagging and reporting is the only way to get and keep a good handle on the number of bluefin harvested. With the mandatory reporting by recreational fisherman, and the speed of computers, a close check could have been kept to prevent overages of a large number and a true number of harvested tonage would be in the books instead of having to quess. May be the numbers would work against the recreational quota, but I would believe that it should actually work in the favor of the recreational fishermens quota. At least we would have hard numbers to show and prove the tonage actually caught when ICCAT or any other regulatory arm of the fisheries wanted to shut down or cut the quotas.

Everyone has one! This is just my opinion.

Capt. Joe Shute

Joe,
Good points, I think that nmfs should make it mandatory that every state has a reporting system like they do in N.C. it would save a lot of bullshit in the end. The one thing that needs to be done is the fish need to be reported because if they are not and the feds over guess the numbers which they will then we would have to "pay back the quota" what that means is no fishing till the quotas are filled back up. At least with the reporting system they can be pro active and not reactive and shut it down when the quota is meet so we could fish for them in the following years to come.