was a nice rec. fishery

[Broadbill-Pro]

Jim,

If I jumped off a bridge, you would surely follow me.

[Ron.38 Special]

OK, Here we go....

If you carefully review the data, you will see that last season (second half 07) we had some of the highest PLL catch rates in recent years.

A quick analysis shows that in the shortened season to adjust to a new calendar year season, we caught the equivilent of 92% of the seasonally adjusted quota before carry over.

Simply put, we have a direct quota of 1066 tons per season (6 months) before adjustments for quota we didn't catch last year. In the un-adjusted season number for last half of 07, we caught and adjusted 977 tons or unadjusted 1163 tons. Adjusted its 92% of the seasonal quota, unadjusted, its overr 100% of the quota, or we exceeded the ICCAT recommended landings for that time period!

The first 4 months of 08, we caught 42% or 443 tons. Since the season used to start in Dec 1, if we include Decembers catch, we are at 60% of the seasonal quota.

PLL's are complaining about access and their ability to catch fish, Heck, they exceeded the ICCAT recommended catch for last season, is it any wonder we are catching less fish????? PLL's have to be catching more fish per vessel than they ever have done historically or they wouldn't be able to catch 92% of the quota with a fraction of the effort!

[RiskTaker]

Here is the link to the published summary statements for the latest 2008 figures:

http://www.nmfs.noaa.gov/sfa/hms/new...030%202008.pdf

http://www.nmfs.noaa.gov/sfa/hms/swo...0by%20Gear.pdf

Note: These numbers should be for the first four months of 2008, as they are published as the 2008 numbers; however, the spreadsheet cells list the year as 2007, for each of the 4 months for 2008. (So don't get overly confused when you view the .pdf document.) This is probably just a minor spreadsheet error which hopefully will be corrected before the next monthly update is posted.

(HMS Advisors please take note to pass the word to the Director, OSF, to have this corrected.)

2007

http://www.nmfs.noaa.gov/sfa/hms/swo...031%202007.pdf

Source location: Office of Sustainable Fisheries - Highly Migratory Species

Here is another interesting observation:

If you consider the percentage of our annual harvest caught by Buoy Fishermen compared to PLL, below the N35 lattitude; the buoy fishermen accounted for about 11% of the harvest, (not the quota), in 2007 and about 4% for the first 4 months of 2008, again below the N35 lattitude.

So as much as we may be complaining about Buoy fishermen "getting them all" in the FEC waters, they still account for a small percentage of the harvest. So the good news is that there is Commercial access in So. Florida waters and hopefully that will be sufficient reason to keep PLL out of this area permanently. Maybe, it is a strategy that can be viewed as the lesser of two evils? Or maybe only the recreational, charter and head boats should be allowed to catch them in so. Florida? Incidental catches are even more negligible to the harvest.

If not a lesser evil, then we may notice that we may really start complaining about fewer swordfish to be found in South Florida waters if some of the PLL fleet start harvesting in this area too.

Some may say that if they didn't catch them here, then they can still catch them there because they are still highly migratory fish and the fish will be picked off (a/k/a harvested) somewhere, no matter what. At least we don't have the PLL fleet patrolling the narrow corridor of the straights of Florida, plus the Bahamians do not harvest them commercially by PLL means.

But it still goes back to the bottom line: we are still harvesting xxx metric tons of swordfish from our waters year over year. So if we are starting to notice a decline, we have some data available to indicate that the harvest we are doing has xxx impact.

P.S. - I like tenderized meat.