[WaterAye]

This is an offshoot from the Winter Flounder Moratorium thread.

HJ, I understand we can't manage fisheries using only common sense, the most common man is still just a man. I do however feel common sense has a role to play in management and we are in sore need of some in fisheries management today.

 

[guest]

"common sense" is subjective. One man's common sense is anthers "fish grab" One guys common sense approach to rebuilding a stock might be the death of a whole commercial or rec industry.

 

[HungryJack]

WaterAye wrote:
we are in sore need of some in fisheries management today.
The only reason we have fisheries management today is

because there was no common sense applied by fishermen in the past.

 

[STRIKERTHREE]

Common sense and management the 2 word dont go together

 

[loligo]

HungryJack wrote:
WaterAye wrote:
we are in sore need of some in fisheries management today.
The only reason we have fisheries management today is

because there was no common sense applied by fishermen in the past.

and this has changed for the better now?

You could fish a 100 acre pond with a fishing pole for the rest of your life and catch a lot of fish out of it....or you could fish it with a dragger for few days and.....you get the idea, so wheres the common sense, then or now Jack?

 

[WaterAye]

HJ wrote:
Theonly reason we have fisheries management today is

because there was no common sense applied by fishermen in the past.

I think the reason we have fisheries management today is because folks had enough common sense to see what was happening (to fish stocks and other natural resources) and they passed well intended legislation to help foster good stewardship. Unfortunately that ship has been hijacked.

STRIKER wrote:
Commonsense and management the 2 word dont go together
I totally agree. It's like oil and water. It's not that they don't care, often they understand but are boxed in by bad legislation. Some do not care and others have their own agendas.

quest wrote:
"common sense" is subjective. I agree, this makes it tricky. I don't have the answers, I'm looking for some. There is a branch of statistics which works with anecdotal data. If (and there must be) a way to integrate VPA and other voodoo mathematical guesstimates with real world observations.....common sense could make an appearance.

HJ, Thanks for all the art and entertainment over the years

, good stuff.

 

[NilsS]

WaterAye -

You seem to have been around enough to realize that common sense and bureaucracies are about as close to mutually exclusive as you can get.

That is about the most understandable argument there is for why "anecdotal" observations mean nothing to managers - and that's a fight we've been fighting for at at least two decades.

As far as "why management," - and I'll qualify that to mean management as it is practiced today - I think that can be traced back to the unbelievable botch job the managers did post-Magnuson. Aided, of course, by President Reagan's "Economic Recovery" program and the World Court's Hague Line decision. I'm strongly of the opinion that most of our problems in the Northeast would not exist today if we still had access to the waters we lost because of the World Court decision and we didn't have the boats that were built because outside investors could - and did - clean up financially by building and operating commercial fishing vessels (this situation was exacerbated by the post-Magnuson feeling of euphoria because our fish were finally ours and we couldn't catch - and export - too many). But most of our overcapitalization wasn't due to the investment strategies of the fishermen, other than the fact that they might have been compelled to upgrade to keep up with the kid at the next dock with minimum experience but with a new million buck boat owned by a bunch of lawyers in Westchester.

Loligo - hook and line can overfish a stock as surely as trawling. Trawling can be managed as effectively (or undoubtedly more so with an open access recreational fishery) as hook and line. And you can probably have a "sustainable" dynamite fishery if you do it in the right place. The average hook and line fisherman probably has a "bycatch percentage" higher than the average commercial fisherman. You might be able to control your catch a significant part of the time, but the majority of hook and line guys can't. And dead is dead (you've read that before, I suspect).

You want an effective management system - try putting one guy - or gal - in charge, with an adequate research budget, with adequate enforcement, and with a pool of knowledgeable advisors. Limit him to plus or minus 5% or 10% increments a year with an adequate response period, and see what happens. Catch goes up (allowing for other significant factors like the state of the economy, strength of the dollar, etc.), cut back effort. Catch goes down, increase effort - but by minimal amounts and with no expectations of short-term changes. It ain't rocket science because so much of it is far beyond our understanding, let alone control, so let's stop treating it as if it is (the computer modeling mystique).

Nils

This post edited by NilsS 12:14 PM 02/29/2008

 

[loligo]

you'd have to show me the research on that Nils----->

NilsS wrote:

Loligo - hook and line can overfish a stock as surely as trawling. Trawling can be managed as effectively (or undoubtedly more so with an open access recreational fishery) as hook and line.

Nils

I just disagree, completely.

This post edited by loligo 06:43 PM 03/09/2008

 

[CoppersCrew]

Common sense has no place in fisheries management....

 

[NilsS]

CC -

You're right. It doesn't. But considering what we know, what we don't, and the political football fisheries management has been turned into, it would surely help.

Loligo -

To tell you the truth, that doesn't surprise me an awful lot, but I'm sure we both know dragger captains who can fish more cleanly than the average summer weekend bait dunker. Paraphrasing Quint, "squid goes on the hook, hook goes in the water, fish eats the squid." Perhaps 50% (or more) of the time it's the wrong fish. Perhaps 30% of the time the fish is dead. Multiply that by whatever you wish.

Draggers kill the wrong kind of fish, sometimes. Hook and liners kill the wrong kind of fish, sometimes. Gillnetters kill the wrong kind of fish, as do purse seiners and catfish ticklers and hand grenaders and spearfishermen and C&R guys and just about anyone else who fishes (maybe not harpooners). You might be better than most hook and liners, but is every fish you hook a keeper? Is every fish you release a survivor? You don't want to kill fish, then you don't fish.

Rec fishing schlubs can kill as many fish unnecessarily as draggers. It's just a matter of numbers.

 

[HungryJack]

loligo wrote:
you'd have to show me the reaserch on that Nils----->
With common sense as our management tool,
you don't need research, only common sense.

Now common sense tells me Nil's is right.

Science/research also supports his statement and
History has shown this to be fact as well.

So, here is yet proof again why "common sense" has no
part or point in the management process.

Common sense isn't so common...........

 

[dsedy]

"Management of many is the same as management of few. It is a matter of organization." Sun Tzu...The Art Of War

 

[loligo]

perhaps we need

NilsS wrote:

Loligo -

To tell you the truth, that doesn't surprise me an awful lot, but I'm sure we both know dragger captains who can fish more cleanly than the average summer weekend bait dunker. Paraphrasing Quint, "squid goes on the hook, hook goes in the water, fish eats the squid." Perhaps 50% (or more) of the time it's the wrong fish. Perhaps 30% of the time the fish is dead. Multiply that by whatever you wish.

a fisheries training program to be completed before we issue permits?

My experiences are obviously a lot different than most, but I have very little in the way of discards, most of my "bycatches" are retained (legally too)but I understand and agree about the average guy not having the where with all to be able to selectively use the gear to the same affect.

On the same thought I always laugh when the new guys come here in the spring to tow for squid and tear up their expensive nets because they don't know where the hangs are, although I don't laugh when they hang on spots where I fish later in the year, especially if they lose the codend because I end up losing gear to them....hmmph.

Nils, please explain to me, if you can please- How did we manage to make it 400 years on this side of the Atlantic using only hook gear, with exponentially more people fishing, if hooks aren't so sustainable?

 

[guest]

loligo wrote:
Nils, please explain to me, if you can please- How did we manage to make it 400 years on this side of the Atlantic using only hook gear, with exponentially more people fishing, if hooks aren't so sustainable?


because we also were not paving over wetlands, dumping toxic chemicals into the ocean, targeting forage in massive amounts, and otherwise screwing with the rest of the ecosystem.

And Halibut where pretty much done even before the trawl was used reg from sailing ships....


This post edited by guest 07:46 PM 02/29/2008

 

[capt13]

NilsS wrote:
Loligo - hook and line can overfish a stock as surely as trawling. ..........Nils
hook and line "recreational" fishing will never, ever, ever overfish a stock. Only when the rec's start selling or "bartering" their catch will there be a chance of this happening ........... but hey, then they aren't rec's anymore, are they?

 

[619627]

Capt13 wrote:
Only when the rec's start selling or "bartering" their catch will there be a chance of this happening ........... but hey, then they aren't rec's anymore, are they?

Yes your right.....THEY ARE POACHERS!

As far as halibut, here is a little story:

In response to the demand from the Boston market in the early 1820s, fishing for halibut began in earnest in the Massachusetts Bay-Cape Cod area. This fishery initially had very high catch rates, but by the 1830s the numbers of halibut caught in these areas declined rapidly. The 1830s thus saw the beginnings of the offshore halibut fishery which initially exploited Georges Bank and the Nantucket shoals until catches there began to dwindle in the 1850s. From there the fishery spread into Canadian waters, initially utilising areas around Browns Bank and gradually moving into other areas.

That is from a Canadian website Atlantic Halibut

Many of the historical documents that you read online about halibut report that by the time of the Civil War in the US, halibut stocks were in pretty bad shape due to severe overfishing over a 40 year period...remind yourself we are talking from the early 19th to mid century, and this one fish was overfished by basic fishing methods.

EC NEWELL MAN><

 

[HungryJack]

loligo wrote:
How did we manage to make it 400 years on this side of the Atlantic using only hook gear, with exponentially more people fishing, if hooks aren't so sustainable?
Blowfish and Sheepshead finished off with hooks.

The change in gear from handline to tub trawls on the Grand Banks in the 1700's signaled the beginning of the decline of that fishery.
It was no longer the bail job of decades earlier and hand lines no longer did the job.

Couple of fish in Southern California were essentially wiped out in the early part of this century with hooks only.

Its not HOW you catch them.
But HOW MANY you catch.
ALWAYS will be that way.

 

[HungryJack]

capt13 wrote:
NilsS wrote:
Loligo - hook and line can overfish a stock as surely as trawling. ..........Nils
hook and line "recreational" fishing will never, ever, everoverfish a stock.
Blowfish count ?
How about Sheepshead ?

Rec anglers in California finished off two species of fish with hooks only, all before WW2 and modern fishing technology to help.

Archaeological records from thousands of years ago show localized depletion of certain species of fish and shellfish along our coast.
Accomplished by people who made hooks from wood and used rocks and sticks for fish traps.

Didn't mommy teach you never to say never

This post edited by HungryJack 10:09 PM 02/29/2008

 

[NilsS]

For maybe more than you wanted to know about fishing "crises"

Go to the FishNet USA website and take the first link in the dropdown to the left - "Over a century of crises." Kind of amazing what you can muck out of the NY Times archives in a couple of weeks.

 

[twofinbluna]

CoppersCrew wrote:
Common sense has no place in fisheries management....

Are you jokin? Or being serious? I cannot tell...but I do not see why common sense would have no place in management. It would go a LONG way in helping guide us on issues like dogfish and herring. Yeah, we do not need to be going solely (or even primarily) on common sense, but it would really be a great thing if it was at least part of the process. IMO.

This post edited by twofinbluna 01:26 AM 03/01/2008