Highly Migratory Species Report

As you all know, Spiny Dogfish have become a huge and increasing difficult problem. I attended an excellent presentation put together by Nils Stolpe on dogfish. He asked to the meeting the key scientists and all major players who will have an impact on the future of Spiny Dogfish.

The meeting emphasized that not only is there a problem but a pending ecosystem catastrophe. The problem is not only the huge size of the dogfish population but the terrible impact they are having on ALL other managed fisheries. This issue is in need of immediate regulatory and management action.

ASMFC is moving ahead with their proposed 8,000,000 pound yearly dogfish fishery. The problem is immediate action is needed immediately! This was illustrated by the data presented at the meeting which is summarized below:

Spiny Dogfish NMFS data sheet:
Current NMFS Spiny Dogfish population estimates:
Female  155,800 MT
Male    468,000 MT
Total   623,800 MT Total S/D Population

MT converted to Pounds
623,800 MT X 2,200 pounds = 137,236,000 pounds
NMFS data has serious Spiny Dogfish catchability issues which suggests a much larger biomass.

Estimated S/D food eaten in pounds is 6 times Dogfish weight yearly: Seems low to me! 137,236,000 S/D population in pounds X 6 times body weight food eaten estimate = 823,386,000 pounds food consumed yearly

Scientist’s estimate 93% of dogfish food consumed yearly is fish. 823,386,000 S/D lbs food consumed X 93. % is fish=765,748,980 lbs fish consumed year.

Current NMFS data states Spiny Dogfish consume over 25% of Fluke and Cod YOY. NMFS Scientists estimate the Spiny Dogfish population doubles every 9 years or 15,250,000 pounds yearly additional Spiny Dogfish YOY.

NMFS Catchability issues! NMFS performs trawl surveys in the spring, summer and fall each year. They treat Spiny Dogfish as if they were bottom feeding species like fluke or winter flounder. New satellite tags document that these dogfish spend only 10% of their day on the bottom.

They are clearly a true mid-range species. The current trawl surveys are reporting only part of the total population size.

In addition, the satellite tags found they often move offshore into the 1,000 FATHOM area and feed as far down as 1,800 feet. Any of these species in these areas are never counted by NMFS trawl surveys which end at 100 fathoms. Currently Spiny Dogfish are the most abundant species caught in the NMFS trawl survey by a huge percentage.

ASMFC planned 8 million pound proposed directed fishery will not stop YOY increases.

To sacrifice ALL economically far more valuable species to build a larger Spiny Dogfish population is a total violation of the ecosystem management concept or any other fishery management guidelines you desire to apply.

The commercial dogfish fishery must be immediately increased to more than 15 Million pounds per year PLUS an additional major directed harvest of the male dogfish component.

The Atlantic shelf ecosystem will support only so many tons of biomass. You can have an ocean biomass dominated by dogfish or you can have a balanced ecosystem biomass. You cannot have both.

The Atlantic Ocean’s shelf ecosystem supports only a finite number of biomass tons. The proposed 8 million pound fishery will not even dent the current biomass imbalance. To return S/D to where they are less than 10% of the Atlantic biomass as estimated by NMFS 1980 fishery data you must reduce the current Spiny Dogfish population by more than 80%.

The need for action is immediate but the system is caught in politics and misplaced conservation issues. It must change immediately or all will lose their most desired fisheries.