Ahab's Journal

Dogfish: A species in danger?

Fishermen will tell you that spiny dogfish — a hungry, aggressive species swarming nets and hooks up and down the East Coast — can take care of themselves.

But to their dismay, the plentiful small shark species that's been called everything from a pest to a plague could soon join animals such as bison and iguanas as protected international endangered species.

The European Union has sponsored the dogfish for a listing with the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) that could quash the already fragile market for a fish many say is devouring more commercially valuable food fish.

Read "Dogfish: A species in danger?"

Marine protected area proposals reviewed

OCEAN CITY, Md. -- The Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council met in Ocean City, Md. on Oct. 13-14. The council reviewed its proposed nominations for Marine Protected Area (MPA) designations and solicited input from the public regarding them. The meeting also served as a forum for a number of executive committee meetings and meetings of its law enforcement, protected resources, and surfclam/ocean quahog committees.

Read "Marine protected area proposals reviewed"

Some call them spiny dogfish, fishermen call them 'plague,' and they're headed for southern New Jersey

Commercial fisherman Marty Buzas calls them the perfect predator. They may be small for a shark, the largest ones coming in at about 15 pounds, but they're brazen enough to steal fish right out of his nets.

"They're an eating machine. You name it and they eat it. The only real predator of a spiny dogfish is an octopus, and the ocean isn't exactly teeming with octopus," said Buzas.

That's one reason Buzas has chosen his side on a debate raging about the spiny dogfish shark. When he dresses them out, he finds their stomachs full of fish that are more valuable, including mackerel, squid, butterfish and weakfish.

Fishermen in New England have been complaining about a rise in populations of spiny dogfish this summer, putting a dent in the stocks of fish that are more marketable, such as cod. Some have pulled up lines of hooks and found a spiny dogfish on almost every one. Or, they find a half-eaten fish on the hook decimated by a spiny dogfish.

Read "Some call them spiny dogfish, fishermen call them 'plague,' and they're headed for southern New Jersey"

Jones spearheads letter opposing spiny dogfish CITES listing

 Congressman Walter Jones and Senators Richard Burr and Kay Hagan urge Commerce Secretary Gary Locke and Interior Secretary Ken Salazar to oppose the listing of spiny dogfish under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species.  The letter is signed by 18 other representatives.

Download Dogfish Letter

MAFMC to Broadcast Meetings

 

Beginning with its October 13-15, 2009 Council meeting in Ocean City, Maryland, the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council will be broadcasting its meetings.  

Sulikowski awarded $237,000 NOAA spiny dogfish grant

BIDDEFORD, Maine - University of New England marine biologist James Sulikowski, Ph.D., has placed himself in the middle of a contentious debate between conservationists and the commericial fishing industry over the health of the spiny dogfish stock.

Sulikowski, assistant professor, Department of  Marine Sciences, has been awarded a $237,000 grant from the NOAA Saltonstall-Kennedy Grant Program to use satellite tags to examine the behavior of spiny dogfish in the Northwest Atlantic. The research will try to determine the habitat, depth and movement patterns of the spiny dogfish to better understand the  inconsistencies in data collected by federal agencies and the commercial fishing industry.

The status of the spiny dogfish, Squalus acanthias, stock in the northwest Atlantic Ocean has become a volatile issue. Distributed from Labrador to Florida, this species was once considered to be the most abundant shark throughout this geographic range.

Read "Sulikowski awarded $237,000 NOAA spiny dogfish grant"

Fishermen Cry Foul

Industry worries about new members of council

In June, the governors of New York, New Jersey, and Virginia chose delegates to the Mid-Atlantic Council: Steven Schafer of New York, Christopher Zeman of New Jersey, and Peter deFur of Virginia, whose names were not well known to the industries they are supposed to represent. They had not been recommended to the governors by the state agencies overseeing marine resources, as has been the accepted norm since the councils were created in 1976.

Read "Fishermen Cry Foul"

MAFMC Spiny Dogfish Amendment Scoping Document

No public meeting scheduled in North Carolina, but instructions for submitting written comments are in this document.  Deadline for commenting is September 4, 2009.

Read Scoping Document Here

Program lets some LI anglers pay to avoid fishing ban

"A select group of charter and party boats have paid for the right to take customers out fishing without interruption - even during the midseason closure intended to reduce New York's fluke catch.

Faced with the state's tightest-ever recreational harvest restrictions, those boats are turning to an unusual federal program that raises money for fisheries research by selling off a portion of the annual catch, usually to commercial boats.

But to some who don't participate, it looks more like a pay-to-play arrangement that unfairly privatizes a natural resource. And others say the program gives captains incentive and opportunity to cheat.

The mid-Atlantic Research Set-Aside Program also lends participants an economic edge - they can fish out of season, when demand is higher. Most buy the extra fishing rights at an outside auction run by the National Fisheries Institute, a seafood industry trade group based in McLean, Va."

Read "Program lets some LI anglers pay to avoid fishing ban"
 

Notice of Availability for Amendment 1 to the Tilefish FMP

The National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) has announced that the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council (Council) has submitted Amendment 1 to its Tilefish Fishery Management Plan (FMP). This submission incorporates both the Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS) and the Initial Regulatory Flexibility Analysis (IRFA) for review by the Secretary of Commerce. The proposed measures in Amendment 1 address issues and problems that have been identified since the FMP was first implemented. These measures are designed to achieve the management objectives of the FMP, and include a means to implement an Individual Fishing Quota (IFQ) program.

 

LI commercial fishermen: Quotas crippling industry

"At issue are 20-year-old federal quotas that limit New York's share of annual fluke landings to 7.6 percent of the total coastal catch. By contrast, North Carolina gets 27.4 percent, Virginia 21 percent and New Jersey 16 percent. North Carolina boats can fish New York waters and take thousands of pounds more fluke than locals. Meanwhile, fish processed at the Shinnecock dock in Hampton Bays dropped by half between 2000 and 2006."

Read "LI commercial fishermen: Quotas crippling industry"

 

MAFMC Begins Scoping for Omnibus ACL/AM Amendment

The Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council (Council) proposes to develop an Omnibus Amendment which will amend each of the Council’s Fishery Management Plans (FMPs) to address the new requirements of the Magnuson-Stevens Reauthorization Act of 2006 (MSRA) for annual catch limits (ACLs) and accountability measures (AMs).

 

LI commercial fishermen expect hard times to get harder

 "The decline is visible at the Shinnecock Commercial Dock in Hampton Bays. Fourteen of the 18 commercial boats at the town-owned dock are on the selling block; last year, two were sold to scrappers, fishermen say.

Bob Soleau, owner of Soleau's Wharf adjacent to the town dock, said 35 to 40 boats fished out of the port 10 years ago, and he oversaw three busy fish-packing facilities. These days, he said, 20 to 22 boats regularly work from the port, and he's down to one packing house."

Read "LI commercial fishermen expect hard times to get harder"

Pew group seeks tighter Mid-Atlantic fishing regs

"The environmental arm of the well-endowed Pew Charitable Trusts has launched a campaign against "overfishing" in the mid-Atlantic that an official with the regional fishery management council says is not occurring.

And the official describes the Pew claim as nothing more than "propaganda." "

Read "Pew group seeks tighter Mid-Atlantic fishing regs" 

UNH researchers studying spiny dogfish, Gulf of Maine's mini shark

"The preliminary results show that the dogfish age at maturity — typically between 10-15 years — has not changed dramatically over the last couple decades. However, the growth rate may be slowing down, so that smaller sized fish are reaching maturity at around the same age as is typical for that species in the Atlantic.

"I think this trend was initially set into motion by the fishing pressure on them in the 1990s," Bubley says. "The largest sized dogfish were harvested by fishermen, and so the smaller ones remained behind to reproduce. They passed their genes on to the next generation, causing size selection to occur where smaller fish are able to reproduce." "

Read "UNH researchers studying spiny dogfish, Gulf of Maine's mini shark"

MFC Nomination Committee to Meet Dec. 2

The Nomination Committee of the N.C. Marine Fisheries Commission will meet via conference call on Dec. 2, at 9:00 a.m. The committee will meet in the conference room at the N.C. Division of Marine Fisheries headquarters, 3441 Arendell Street, Morehead City.

 

The conference call will be held to discuss selecting three qualified candidates for an at-large appointment to the Mid-Atlantic Fisheries Management Council.

 

For more information please contact the Marine Fisheries Commission at 252-808-8022.

Dog control

"David Pierce, the deputy director of the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries, argues that widening his state's modest inshore dogfish industry would be "a precautionary and commonsense approach, especially in the context of ecosystem-based fishery management."

When the complaints about dogfish abundance started in recent years, "at first I thought this was rather dramatic, over the top," Pierce recalled. But in his research, Pierce discovered state records showing how in the 1960s Massachusetts officials considered sanctioning "a dogfish eradication campaign." "

Read "Dog Control"

Experts advocate larger dogfish harvest

"Now it's clear that dogfish are well on their way to a recovered population, said Paul Rago, a scientist with the Northeast Fisheries Science Center. "A 10,000-ton (annual catch) fishery in the long term is possible," Rago told an audience of fishermen and fisheries managers."

Read "Experts advocate larger dogfish harvest"

 

 

Spiny dogfish are overly abundant, problematic

"The National Marine Fisheries Service's annual spring bottom trawl survey from Cape Hatteras to the Gulf of Maine revealed that spiny dogfish are as abundant as fishermen say they are."

Read "Spiny dogfish are overly abundant, problematic"

 

MAFMC Council Appointments

In June 2008, Secretary of Commerce Carlos M. Gutierrez appointed three new members and reappointed two current members to the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council (Council). 

Continue reading "MAFMC Council Appointments" »

It's a modest increase, about 2.6 million pounds over this year's 15.77 million pound quota, enabled by a new scientific consensus about the state of the East Coast fluke population.

Read "Cautious increase for '09"

Dusty Rhodes, former MAFMC vice chairman, has learned that the new summer flounder model with its new reference points that fisheries scientists have adopted presents not a biomass half built, but one that is at least 72 percent restored.

Further, he has learned that NMFS lawyers are working on a new interpretation of the Magnuson-Stevens Act's 10-year rebuilding target.

Read "Fluke numbers prove anglers are not overfishing the industry"

Even the federal government is cutting back its sea time — canceling a critical survey of surf clams and ocean quahogs for the first time in 27 years.

Soaring fuel costs have busted the federal oceans research budget and forced the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to cancel a host of projects around the coasts.

The Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council got the surprise news Thursday, just a day after its science advisers urged new research into how climate change may be forcing a shift of surf clams toward the northeast and away from New Jersey.

Read "Fuel prices cancel surf-clam survey"

Dogfish eat other fish, sometimes right off the hook or out of the net. Estimates of dogfish predation on one-year-old cod made in 1998 were for 2.15 million fish, out of a total population of 5.77 million. That’s 37 percent of the juvenile cod population.

Read " Dogfish population being rebuilt"

Sulikowski said studies of dogfish predicted the population would rebuild to stock levels 12 years from now but the level is close to stock levels now, including the number of adult females. Sulikowski said the rebounding population is increasingly challenging for fishermen. Continue reading "Spiny dogfish rebound much earlier than predicted"

A voracious eater, the dogfish fills its belly with anything it finds. Continue reading "The trouble with dogfish"

Cautious increase for '09

It's a modest increase, about 2.6 million pounds over this year's 15.77 million pound quota, enabled by a new scientific consensus about the state of the East Coast fluke population.

Read "Cautious increase for '09"

Fluke numbers prove anglers are not overfishing the industry

Dusty Rhodes, former MAFMC vice chairman, has learned that the new summer flounder model with its new reference points that fisheries scientists have adopted presents not a biomass half built, but one that is at least 72 percent restored.

Further, he has learned that NMFS lawyers are working on a new interpretation of the Magnuson-Stevens Act's 10-year rebuilding target.

Read "Fluke numbers prove anglers are not overfishing the industry"

Fuel prices cancel surf-clam survey

Even the federal government is cutting back its sea time — canceling a critical survey of surf clams and ocean quahogs for the first time in 27 years.

Soaring fuel costs have busted the federal oceans research budget and forced the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to cancel a host of projects around the coasts.

The Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council got the surprise news Thursday, just a day after its science advisers urged new research into how climate change may be forcing a shift of surf clams toward the northeast and away from New Jersey.

Read "Fuel prices cancel surf-clam survey"

Dogfish population being rebuilt

Dogfish eat other fish, sometimes right off the hook or out of the net. Estimates of dogfish predation on one-year-old cod made in 1998 were for 2.15 million fish, out of a total population of 5.77 million. That’s 37 percent of the juvenile cod population.

Read " Dogfish population being rebuilt"

Spiny dogfish rebound much earlier than predicted

Sulikowski said studies of dogfish predicted the population would rebuild to stock levels 12 years from now but the level is close to stock levels now, including the number of adult females. Sulikowski said the rebounding population is increasingly challenging for fishermen. Continue reading "Spiny dogfish rebound much earlier than predicted"

The trouble with dogfish

A voracious eater, the dogfish fills its belly with anything it finds. Continue reading "The trouble with dogfish"