Please help with my college thesis regarding the ABFT

[DPFoley]

Hello,
My name is Daniel Foley and I am currently working on my senior thesis for Endicott College. My thesis statement is: What are the contributing factors to the decline in the Atlantic Bluefin Tuna population? I am an avid northeast fisherman and interested in preserving the Atlantic Bluefin Tuna. If you could take this survey it would be greatly appreciated, it is just 15 questions and will take less than five minutes. Thank you for your time.
ALL SURVEYS RESPONSES ARE CONFIDENTIAL AND USED STRICTLY FOR ACADEMIC PURPOSES.

https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/depletionoftheABFT

[clt_capt]

Interesting survey - But I think it is missing a major cause of depletion for ABFT - The overfishing of Bait species... Especially Menhaden

Also no mention of Mediterranean BFT fisheries catching 2 - 3 x their agreed Quotas...

[Capt. kapoc]

You say your an avid northeast fisherman then you should be good here south of NJ we get shut down after apr anyway so we see no decline as we dont fish for the damn things cause of the closures, until the first of the year when all resets again for our AWESOME 3 month fishery

[Carolina Ride]

Daniel: Others on this forum may not agree with me but I don't agree with the premise of the statement you are exploring regarding the decline of BFTs. Compared to when? I started fishing in 1979 and as compared to today, BFT fishing has never been better. There may be some fluctuations from year to year as all things are cyclical including migration patterns but as compared to 30 years ago for the BFTs, they are thriving.

[DPFoley]

Starting the thesis i had to limit myself with the research i was doing. I chose three different problems that were a common theme within the research, overfishing, global warming, and the deepwater horizon spill. But with all of the responses i have received its easy to see there could be more problems. @Carolina Ride, i like your response a lot, thats why I chose this topic for my Thesis, to figure out if there is a problem. Thanks for your feedback!

[seapower]

I have to say that I'm in Carolina Ride's camp. Most of what I see as "problem's" posed by NMFS, are actually cases they amke without fact to back it up. It's about them keeping their job's and funding toward's their agency. I have seen that same common thread over the last 30 odd year's I have been around offshore fishing. When there is an un-expected large or numerous fish class for a given year, they have no more idea than we do were the fish came from. Therefore my obvious question would be, if they don't know where they came from, how can they know where they went. The processes they use for their "scientific" data can have hole's shot in it by any competent commercial fisherman.

Don't get me wrong there are abuses on the tuna population's, but I believe you'll see it vastly comes from other Countries. We have more regulation's and closures put in place for US fisherman, that I can hardly believe we have anything but a minimal inpact on them. Just my opinion, Frank

[Capt Lindsay]

While BFT are struggling back, the main reason that the BFT were nowhere to be found for decades was due to our own commercial fishermen who decimated the stocks. Your survey does not offer that up for discussion.

The history was that the West Coast tuna fishermen, seiners all, fished out the U.S. west coast waters and moved south off the coasts of Central and South American countries. After fishing those areas heavily, many of those countries passed legislation pushing the U.S. tuna seiners out of their waters.

The seiners then came through the Panama Canal and came around to the U.S. East Coast where they damn near fished out every single BFT they could find.

Back in the 50s and 60s, we could catch BFT footballs all day long. Fish up to 20 pounds were plentiful. Further offshore, the BFT were larger and we had tons of giants in teh fall and winter.

After the West Coast seiners got done, we didn't see any BFT for many, many years.

So, while the worldwide BFT problem is one that has the European and Asian nations dramatically overfishing the stocks, the Gulf and East Coast stocks have slowly recovered due to U.S. fishermen becoming far more conservation minded over the last 50 years.

There are 6 or 7 East Coast tuna seiner licenses active and ir is my understanding that Teddy Kennedy's family controls 3 of those. Seiner caught BFT are good for cat food. What a waste of a fine resource.

[Heli Sports]

While BFT are struggling back, the main reason that the BFT were nowhere to be found for decades was due to our own commercial fishermen who decimated the stocks. Your survey does not offer that up for discussion.

The history was that the West Coast tuna fishermen, seiners all, fished out the U.S. west coast waters and moved south off the coasts of Central and South American countries. After fishing those areas heavily, many of those countries passed legislation pushing the U.S. tuna seiners out of their waters.

The seiners then came through the Panama Canal and came around to the U.S. East Coast where they damn near fished out every single BFT they could find.

Back in the 50s and 60s, we could catch BFT footballs all day long. Fish up to 20 pounds were plentiful. Further offshore, the BFT were larger and we had tons of giants in teh fall and winter.

After the West Coast seiners got done, we didn't see any BFT for many, many years.

So, while the worldwide BFT problem is one that has the European and Asian nations dramatically overfishing the stocks, the Gulf and East Coast stocks have slowly recovered due to U.S. fishermen becoming far more conservation minded over the last 50 years.

There are 6 or 7 East Coast tuna seiner licenses active and ir is my understanding that Teddy Kennedy's family controls 3 of those. Seiner caught BFT are good for cat food. What a waste of a fine resource.

Why comment on something you quite obviously know absolutely nothing about?

[wauwinet]

Why comment on something you quite obviously know absolutely nothing about?

I think he is right on the money.

[Sushi50]

Net and PLL boats in US and other Atlantic/Med waters. Not only those net boats taking BFT, but their forage fish also such as menhaden. Florida fishing did just fine after they banned most of the nets and traps, and the swords have come back fairly well after the PLLs were slowed down/banned in certain areas/times. All affected stocks and rod and reelers would benefit from the same bans and restrictions coast-wise.