Save the Dogfish!
Jul. 23rd, 2002 05:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
senoritafish(Prompted by an article at OnlineMariner.com about dogfish conservation, and possible closure of commercial fishing for them on the East Coast)
I remember when I was a gillnet observer in New Hampshire in 1989. I was out on a boat that was fishing for cod, haddock, etc. The dogfish must have been migrating or something, every net was filled with them. A trip that normally would have taken around twelve hours lasted more than 24. We started picking at about 6 AM and did not finish until 2 AM the next morning. I finally gave up sampling (there were none of my target species to measure anyway) and just helped them pick dogfish out of the nets. It seemed like every other mesh had a small shark in it. Since they had planned to be back by noon or so, no one had brought much food, and tempers were flaring. Not only did it seem impossible to clear the nets, there were warning on the radio of a hurricane approaching; the skipper wanted to get all his gear out of the water before it hit.
All the dogfish were discarded; there was no market for them at the time. I threw as many as I could overboard alive, but the angry deckhands were killing as many as went over. Every bin on the boat was filled with them. "We ought to get a chipper mounted on the stern and just run every damn one of these bastards through it!" grated one guy.
I figure there were at least a several tons on dogfish caught that day by one small boat. Who knows how many times situations like this occurred? At that point, they were just a nuisance, no one even wanted to eat them. Now, they at the point of being overfished, just like so many other commercially caught fish. It's very sad.
It's taken till now to learn that even the oceans are not infinite. When will we learn?
(But the hurricane was exciting!)
I remember when I was a gillnet observer in New Hampshire in 1989. I was out on a boat that was fishing for cod, haddock, etc. The dogfish must have been migrating or something, every net was filled with them. A trip that normally would have taken around twelve hours lasted more than 24. We started picking at about 6 AM and did not finish until 2 AM the next morning. I finally gave up sampling (there were none of my target species to measure anyway) and just helped them pick dogfish out of the nets. It seemed like every other mesh had a small shark in it. Since they had planned to be back by noon or so, no one had brought much food, and tempers were flaring. Not only did it seem impossible to clear the nets, there were warning on the radio of a hurricane approaching; the skipper wanted to get all his gear out of the water before it hit.
All the dogfish were discarded; there was no market for them at the time. I threw as many as I could overboard alive, but the angry deckhands were killing as many as went over. Every bin on the boat was filled with them. "We ought to get a chipper mounted on the stern and just run every damn one of these bastards through it!" grated one guy.
I figure there were at least a several tons on dogfish caught that day by one small boat. Who knows how many times situations like this occurred? At that point, they were just a nuisance, no one even wanted to eat them. Now, they at the point of being overfished, just like so many other commercially caught fish. It's very sad.
It's taken till now to learn that even the oceans are not infinite. When will we learn?
(But the hurricane was exciting!)
