By Richard Salit
rsalit@providencejournal.com
So much seafood is inadvertently caught and tossed overboard for dead that the persistent practice is a serious threat to efforts to restore depleted U.S. fish populations, including numerous species off Rhode Island, according to a report released on Thursday.
In “Wasted Catch,” the Washington-based environmental group Oceana asserts that 17 percent to 22 percent of U.S. fishermen’s catch is discarded, amounting to 2-billion pounds every year.
“Bycatch, or the catch of non-target fish and ocean wildlife, is one of the largest threats to maintaining healthy fish populations and marine ecosystems around the world,” the report states.
Among what it calls the nation’s “nine dirty fisheries” are three off Rhode Island. They include Northeast bottom trawling (groundfish, whiting), mid-Atlantic bottom trawling (scup, flounder, sea bass), and New England/mid-Atlantic gillnetters (monkfish, groundfish, skates). In trawling, nets are towed through the water while gillnets are set and anchored.
Rhode Island fisheries regulators acknowledge that bycatch continues to be a problem. It’s a particularly difficult one to resolve, but some progress has been made, they say.
“It’s an issue we grapple with — how to turn discarded fish into landed fish so they are not wasted,” said Mark Gibson, deputy chief of marine fisheries, who represents the state on the New England Fishery Management Council.
Oceana calls for stricter bycatch limits, improved bycatch reporting, incentives for fishermen to reduce bycatch, promotion of more selective fishing gear, and expansion of a program that puts observers on board fishing vessels.
