The future of highly migratory species, including tunas, swordfish and billfish, is tenuous at best. International regulations developed after years of wrangling by ICCAT member nations currently cover only two species, swordfish and bluefin tuna. These regulations in place are weak and are only observed by the United States. The rest of the world has yet to impose and enforce these rules in a meaningful way. Given the biological limitations of these apex predator species it will take 20 to 40 years for them to recover to the stock sizes present just 10 years ago. The adult stocks of these species continues to decline, but at a slower rate. It is unknown if this slowing is due to management or simply because there are so few adult fish left.

Proposed international regulations have gotten much tougher in recent years and now US officials chair the ICCAT Compliance Committee and have taken steps to try and bring other member nations into compliance. 1998 is the first year that sanctions and/or quota restrictions can be applied to nations found out of compliance with management measures adopted by ICCAT. It remains to be seen if ICCAT has the will power to institute such measures and enforce them.

1998 marks a mile stone at ICCAT. The head of the NMFS, Rolland A. Schmitten, will lead the US delegation and also represent the US State Department. He did a lot of work over the last several years in getting tough regulations written into ICCAT rules, so many people are hopeful that his presence as the head of the US delegation will hearld a new era in get tough policies and real efforts to protect remaining stocks and rebuild those in a depleted state.

Even today, most nations ignore international fisheries management and regulations for highly migratory species when the issue of commercial fishing jobs versus conservation and stock rebuilding meet head on. In the New York Times, June 3 edition, they ran an article on Page 3 about this problem. Spain had impounded an Italian fishing boat with illegal net gear. The international legal length limit is a 1.5 miles of drift gill net. This boat had cut it’s net into 1.5 mile strips and then tied them together to get a net of much longer length. Italy reports having enforced the regulations for their boats. However, Greenpeace reported to Italian authorities that 14 Italian boats were still using illegal nets.

In Italy, bluefin tuna catch numbers are collected by an independent agency. This agency reported Italy was over their 1997 bluefin tuna quota by double the allocation. The Italian government then reworked the report and issued a statement claiming their fishermen were over quota by just a small amount. For just these reasons, there is real doubt among the scientists that international regulations can ever become tough enough to save these giant ocean wanders.

Locally, the spiny dogfish shark plan is working it way through the Mid-Atlantic Council process. Woods Hole scientists determined that the adult female population has been decimated in just 6 years of a directed commercial fishery that targetted only the largest adult females. Spiny dogfish had a recruitment failure in 1996 for this reason. Dogfish are slow growing, females require at least 12 years to reach sexual maturity and only then produce one to three pups every other year. During the Memorial Day weekend in 1996, anglers fishing 20 or more miles offshore found huge strings of gill net gear targeting dogfish. Phone calls determined this massive amount of nets was found from Maryland to northern New Jersey, a distance of over 100 miles. The gill nets observed were set close together and stretched on for miles. There was no observed tending of the nets and without any real obverser data, one can only imagine what the wasted bycatch was on just this one weekend!

The Council’s early proposals include a drastic reduction in commercial harvest of dogfish to save the remaining pre-recruits which can become spawners in the next two to six years. It will require the closing of any commercial fishing for dogfish and only allow a bycatch of dogfish to be landed in other fisheries. If this plan is passed and adhered to, it could restore dogfish populations in ten years.

Domestic bluefin tuna rules for 1998 have yet to be made public. The regulation at this time is one fish per boat per day. The proposed regulations will allow one bluefin per angler, per boat, up to four fish for 30 days or until the quota is filled. It has been proposed that the northern zone, New Jersey north, be closed and defer their entire season until September. Most years more tuna are available in September/October. It is proposed that headboats be allowed a small bluefin tuna catch with strict limits.

The federal regulators now publish more words about bluefin tuna regulations than the number tuna available. Anglers have been regulated out of this fishery by an absurd low quota and the failure of regulators to show any stock recovery. The cost of documenting the tiny angler catch was reported at $920,000 in 1997. The value of the recreational fishery according to NMFS estimate was 3 million dollars. A new survey and economic study about the North Carolina winter bluefin fishery found their 90-day season was worth over 3 million dollars alone, which means the rest of the coast, which still maintains a large interest in bluefin angling and thousands of boats that chase them during the limited season represent no economic impact at all! Who the hell is gathering these figures and why are they being purposely skewed to downplay the economic impact it has on the recreational fishing industry? It is becoming obvious that the process of regulation more directed at keeping regulators employed than insuring any bluefin recovery? Their lax commercial regulations have wiped out the huge Gulf of Mexico bluefin tuna spawning stocks and spawning success in that body of water is almost non-existent. Bluefin tuna may well be the only fishery in history where the adult population was exterminated with the approval of federal regulators?

If you think bluefin tuna regulations are a waste of time and effort, wait until you see the future regulation for the yellowfin, bigeye and albacore tunas. Yellowfin tuna supports a huge US recreational offshore fleet. The combination of low quotas and declining stocks will directly destroy this fleet. To date, the same regulators have eliminated recreational fishermen from the large coastal shark fishery. This occurred as the result of only 12 years of directed commercial fishing. The commercial fishery is still open, even though it has been scientifically proven domestically and internationally that no directed commercial shark fishery has ever been biologically sustainable.