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Scientists Say Too Many Fish are Snared in the Wrong Nets

 

December 01, 2005 — By John Heilprin, Associated Press

WASHINGTON — Commercial fisheries in the U.S. kill a pound of fish for every

four pounds intentionally caught, jeopardizing efforts to restore some

struggling stocks, scientists said Wednesday.

 

A tally of the nation's yearly unintentional " bycatch " -- unwanted fish that are

caught and, in most cases, die before being thrown overboard -- was conducted by

scientists Jennie Harrington, Andrew Rosenberg and Ransom Myers.

 

Their peer-reviewed study, sponsored by the environmental group Oceana and

published in the December issue of Fish and Fisheries magazine, found that 1.2

billion tons of fish annually are left for dead with every 4 billion tons caught

in commercial nets.

 

" We can and should do better, " said Rosenberg, dean of the University of New

Hampshire's College of Life Sciences and Agriculture and member of a federal

commission that studied ocean policy. " This sort of waste undermines efforts to

recover those depleted resources. "

 

Most of the fish -- such as skates, monkfish, swordfish, tunas, sharks, salmon

and halibut -- are snared by shrimpers' nets in the Gulf of Mexico or in the

huge trawling nets some vessels use to reach the ocean floor.

 

The Gulf's shrimpers, for example, catch 114,000 tons of shrimp a year but

discard four times that weight in snappers, mackerel, Atlantic croaker, crabs

and porgies.

 

Zeke Grader, executive director of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fisherman's

Associations based in San Francisco, acknowledged the bycatch problem. He said

the government should charge a seafood fee to establish a multibillion-dollar

trust fund -- an idea proposed by the federal commission and some in Congress --

to pay for more selective fishing gear and better fisheries research.

 

" It's both a concern for other fisherman and for the health of the stocks, " he

said. " There's no real easy answer. "

 

Myers, a marine biology professor at Dalhousie University in Canada, said the

waste inevitably will harm the overall health of the oceans unless it first

" wakes up fishery managers to the fact that broad-based action covering all U.S.

fisheries is needed. "

 

The data collected by Rosenberg, Myers and Harrington, a consultant with Marine

Resources Assessment Group in Essex, Mass., is two- to four-years old and mostly

drawn from federal reports. They said the government should start doing its own

annual compilation of bycatch data and enforce further restrictions on fishing

to encourage more use of lighter gear and smaller fishnet mesh sizes.

 

Source: Associated Press

 

 

 

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