Kicking Plastic with Costa Sunglasses at the Miami Boat Show
The Billfish Foundation was honored to be a part of Costa Sunglasses’ Conservation Village, within the Miami Boat Show this year. The venue provided the platform for many conservation organizations, including The Billfish Foundation (TBF) and marine regulatory agencies, to exhibit and share their conservation message with show visitors. TBF was able to talk about the various work we have been working on like tagging program and our recent age and growth work on Atlantic blue marlin. The Village, popular with students of all ages, who seemed aware of the need for ocean conservation yet were unaware of the
Modern Fish Act Signed Into Law
Courtesy of Jasen Gast – Rehab
The Modern Fish Act (MFA), signed into law at the end of 2018, is to improve recreational fishing landings data, increase allocation of fish to anglers by expanding access in mixed-use (commercial and recreational both targeting the same species) fisheries, re-evaluate limited access systems and provide greater flexibility to fishery managers. Flexibility is to be achieved by removing the current hard recovery deadlines (as “short as possible” and “not to exceed ten years”) and establishing recovery deadlines to be “as short as practicable.” Access for 11 million saltwater recreational anglers to fish is
Counting Blue Marlin in the Ocean
How many blue marlin are in the ocean? Counting them isn’t exactly feasible (though you could have fun trying!) so scientists rely on catches and how much effort these catches took over the years. This is called a catch per unit effort (or CPUE) index. But how do you measure effort? And what if the effort has changed over time? Or if the fish moved because the environment changed? To help deal with these challenges, scientists use standardization methods to smooth out changes in fishing gear or the environment. The standardized CPUE index shows the trend of the fish
Changes in Mahi-Mahi allocation coming up in the Atlantic?
Fly Navarro and Adrienne Katz with a nice mahi-mahi
The South Atlantic Fishery Management Council (SAFMC) is considering management options to Amendment 10 on the Dolphin Wahoo Fishery Management Plan. The Amendment offers an important opportunity to modify management strategy for mahi mahi that would better insure healthy population levels intothe future. Central to protecting mahi mahi is restriction of pelagic longlinegear by not authorizing the fishery an allocation. Overfishing mahi-mahi stocks are a genuine concern if
Changes in Reporting for HMS Tournaments
Beginning January 1, 2019, all Atlantic highly migratory species tournaments will be required to submit catch summaries. An Atlantic highly migratory species (HMS) tournament is a tournament that awards points or prizes for catching Atlantic highly migratory species (i.e., swordfish, billfish, sharks and/or tunas). All Atlantic highly migratory species tournament operators will be required to submit an HMS tournament catch summary report within seven days after tournament fishing has ended. NOAA Fisheries uses the data to estimate the total annual catch of highly migratory species and the impact of tournament operations in relation to other types of fishing
Deep-set Buoy Gear set for California
Deep-set buoy gear finally has management alternatives for use in a swordfish fishery off southern California, where the fishery will be a limited entry to approximately 300 commercial vessels. Once the fishery opens (off the Southern California Bight, southeast of Point Conception), 50 permits will be issued immediately, with 25 more permits following each year. The gear lessens the amount of bycatch, which is a major improvement over the previous gillnet gear used for swordfish. Outside the government-specified area for the fishery, anyone can use the gear with a general highly migratory fishery permit. The Pacific Fisheries Management
Chub Mackerel Fishery in the Mid-Atlantic?
Illustration courtesy of DRNEC of Delaware
Chub mackerel, which are important prey species for billfish and other apex predators and to the healthy functioning of the ecosystem, are being considered for inclusion into the Mackerel, Squid and Butterfish Fishery Management Plan by the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council. The current large trawl commercial fishery desires to increase their authorized landings, but this could have significant negative impacts on the stocks, the ecosystem, and recreational fishing opportunities. In light of the huge harvesting capacity of the giant commercial trawlers targeting low-dollar-value forage fish species, expanding the commercial harvest limit for that
ICCAT Marlin Update
Very late in the year and not anticipated, landing limits for Atlantic marlin were raised in the international arena. It was the overfished status of Atlantic billfish that became the subject of an international negotiating proposal put forth by the European Community (EC) at the annual negotiations of the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT). The EC’s proposal called for further reductions in Atlantic blue marlin landing quota from 2000 metric tons to 1,750 metric tons, a positive for that harvesting level would give marlin a 50% probability of recovering by 2028. The reduction is essential
Recreational Billfish Landings Update
The table below provides preliminary 2018 (January 1, 2018 through September 30, 2018) landings in numbers of fish for Atlantic blue and white marlin, roundscale spearfish, and western Atlantic sailfish. With most of the billfish tournaments are complete now, we can see as stated in a previous post, that the recreational community will be well below not only the 250 quota but should be below the 2017 numbers. Landings are compiled using self-reported angler reports from the Atlantic Highly Migratory Species (HMS) Non-Tournament Recreational Swordfish and Billfish Landings Database; tournament landings from the Atlantic Tournament Registration & Reporting (ATR)
Atlantic Blue Marlin Research
Atlantic blue marlin are considered by many in the sportfishing world to be THE pinnacle gamefish. A species targeted by tens of thousands anglers each year. But what do we know about these magnificent and awe-worthy fish? To be honest, not enough. We are still scratching the surface of what we know about them compared to other marine species. For example, age and growth research is basic and well documented for most species caught in commercial fisheries where data collection is readily available, but not so for billfish. TBF spearheaded research on this very topic on Atlantic blue
