The Pelagic Plague

Because, to offer just one example, huge flocks of cow-nosed rays, some weighing 35 pounds, are now wafting into Chesapeake Bay, chowing down on bivalves. In 2006, for instance, they devoured 775,000 oysters All anglers I associate with care deeply about sea turtles simply because they are beautiful parts of nature and because they make the act of fishing more meaningful and exciting. Three times on Cape Cod Bay I’ve had endangered leatherbacks breach near my boat, the last time in dense fog and so close I heard it breathe before I saw it. Although I can’t recall what if any fish I caught on those days, I remember every detail about the turtles, two of which I estimated at 2,000 pounds.

But there’s another, more practical reason for anglers to worry about sea turtles. The leatherback (basically tied with the saltwater crocodile as the planet’s largest reptile and of all marine organisms the species least likely to survive longlining) dines almost exclusively on jellyfish. Loggerheads, whose nesting population in reported a by-catch of 974 turtles (799 of which were loggerheads) with 83 percent of the captures resulting in death or serious injury. Although many vessels lacked observers, the by-catch reported was three times the “incidental take” authorized by NMFS, placing the agency in violation of the Endangered Species Act.

“We’ve taken out a lot of top predators and knocked the system out of whack,” declares Lee Crockett, director of federal fisheries policy for the Pew Environment Group. “We’re conducting these grand, ecosystem-wide experiments to see what longlining does; and we have no idea of what’s going to happen. One of the things the ocean is going to need to withstand increasing global climate change is the diversity we’re destroying.”

Unless longlining directed at yellowfin tuna and swordfish in the Gulf of Mexico is banned in spring and summer, the western stock of Atlantic bluefin tuna is likely to become commercially extinct within five years. The Gulf is their only known spawning habitat.

In 2007, the longline by-catch of bluefins here was reported at 81 metric tons; but, invariably, “reported” by-catch figures are grossly deflated. And this was taken from a breeding population estimated at fewer than 20,000 individuals. In addition, Gulf of Mexico longlining causes the highest by-catch of blue marlin in the Atlantic, and it is clobbering white marlin.

Gulf longliners who kill bluefin tuna as “by-catch” are allowed to retain and sell up to three fish per trip. And, because even a midsize bluefin can fetch $40,000 on the Japanese market, longliners are catching them “incidentally on purpose.” It’s a directed fisheries in disguise, and because longliners depend on it to stay viable they’ve been fiercely lobbying NMFS to allow even more bluefin by-catch.

NMFS—still populated with Bush appointees and, as a tentacle of the Commerce Department, conflicted by a dual mission of promoting and regulating fisheries—has agreed. On June 1, 2009, echoing the industry almost verbatim, the agency issued an Advanced Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (ANPR) in which it suggested a higher or unlimited bluefin by-catch for Gulf longliners and an increase in harvest for swordfish, a species still in the process of recovery. ANPRs precede hearings and public commentary.

The commercial industry was positively giddy. “This is an unprecedented ANPR,” gushed Richard Ruais, mouthpiece for the Blue Water Fisherman’s Association and the American Bluefin Tuna Association. And he told NMFS, that, in its response to the industry’s demands, “Well, you’ve addressed them in spades.”

The marine conservation community, on the other hand, was horrified, as were rank-and-file NMFS professionals who privately expressed their desire for a pelagic longline ban. Within two weeks, 14 NGOs including the National Coalition for Marine Conservation, the Billfish Foundation, the Pew Environment Group and the Coastal Conservation Association together with 57,000 individuals had contacted NMFS, condemning its proposal and supporting a pelagic longline ban in the Gulf from March through September.

Ken Hinman, president of the National Coalition for Marine Conservation, commented as follows: “There is a very real danger of reducing the western Atlantic bluefin tuna’s breeding population below a critical mass—the minimum population sufficient to sustain itself—resulting in a stock failure that’s irreversible. The population of spawning-age fish in the west is just 7 percent of an unexploited stock (and 14 percent of the rebuilding target), despite quotas in place since the early 1980s. The ICCAT ‘rebuilding’ program, implemented in 1998, is not working, evidenced by the fact that the spawning stock today is 11 percent below the level ten years ago…. In the Gulf, in the spring, every fish we kill is a rare western breeder in the act of spawning. We’re killing hundreds each year, as needless longline by-catch.”