Just a thought… so eloquently expressed by author Thomas McGuane:
“We have reached the time in the life of the planet and humanities demands upon it when every fisherman will have to be a river keeper, a steward of marine shallows and a watchman on the high seas.”
Just give some thought about how those words apply to you. A good first step would be to support the Bonefish & Tarpon Trust.
Picked up from the FlatsDoctor (that’s via Twitter), Tribal Bonefish.
Tribal Bonefish is the name we’ve given to a concept, a philosophy of responsible conservation of our coastal resources. It’s about being a responsible participant, not a bystander or someone who damages the resource.
Did you know that Puerto Rico once boasted some of the best bonefish flats in the Caribbean? Ted Williams used to fish there and one flat in particular, La Parguera, was renowned for its gray ghosts.
Times have changed. Puerto Rico is no longer looking after its natural resources as it should… as California, Florida, South Carolina, Texas and Georgia do, as the Bahamas does and as Belize has recently done.
The culprit is the gill net. Unattended, indiscriminate killers of sea life.
Illegal net in Texas
In Florida the gill net ban has been credited with the revival of the snook fishery. In California a gill net ban has been hailed as the key step to restoring White Sea Bass and Halibut. Pretty much every place a ban has been put in place and enforced good things have happened for fisheries and anglers.
As long as the gill nets stay, the bonefish will suffer and the tourist dollars that should go to Puerto Rico will be spread around the Caribbean to other countries.
Darn shame. Some lessons are harder to learn than others. I’m hoping that Puerto Rico can let go of the gill net habit, which would only be a positive for the Puerto Rican fishery and economy.
There has been a lot out there about the cold temps and Florida… here’s a round up:
There was a great Op-Ed in Field and Stream about upcoming (and very important) meetings in Florida that will further detail what protections are and are not given to bonefish and permit.
The news isn’t so great. It appears that the good folks in the Florida Wildlife Conservation Commission think that “catch and release” means you can’t touch the fish, despite C&R being on the books in lots and lots of states and countries.
From the article…
At the FWC Bonefish Workshops in October 2009, FWC staff stated that the FWC interpretation was that “catch and release” was equivalent to “prohibited species”. Based on FWC’s interpretation, this means that even touching the fish (e.g., holding a bonefish to take a photo, remove a hook, or to measure) constitutes ‘”possession” and a fine/ticket if witnessed by an FWC enforcement officer. This interpretation is counter to responsible fisheries conservation.
Catch and release is used as a fisheries management tool throughout the United States and in many places in the world. In these locations, catch and release is interpreted as releasing the fish alive soon after capture. Responsibly photographing, measuring, and weighing of the fish are permitted in these states.
They also appear set to roll back protections for permit that would include opening the species to spear fishing in federal waters and eliminating spawning season closures.
The comments to Field and Stream bit speak with one voice in opposition to the thrust of the article. In fact, they use very similar wording and recite the same points. Kind of reminds one of the Bush team hitting the political talk shows all reading from the same playbook. Democrats aren’t organized enough to do that. It all smells very organized and that smell stinks.
Midcurrent.com had an op-ed directed at the permit issue.s
You can read the Bonefish & Tarpon Trust’s press release about the issue here. Once again, BTT is the leader on this issue.
Support BTT if you enjoy the tug of a bone, permit or tarpon.
Aaron Adams and BTT are everywhere, carrying the water for most of us who love, like or otherwise fish for bonefish. Found a story from the Miami Herald. BTT went down and met with Bahamian guides to discuss increasing participation in the tagging and reporting of tagged fish. Read the story here.
Tagged bone. Photo from... MIKE MAZUR / FLY FISHING IN SALT WATERS
The never-ending string of good news just keeps on coming. This time it is about Bimini… over-development… taking paradise and crushing it under the weight of “progress.” Do we really need a golf course on every island? When I become the Leviathan, this sort of thing will stop (and I’ll be allowed to fish in Cuba too).
Every once in a while you’ll see a picture of a bonefish held up for the camera by a boga grip. This would seem like a good idea. It sure must be an easy way to grip the fish and control the shaky wildness that is a bonefish. It will let you get a weight on the fish pretty easily too.
There’s a downside, however… and a pretty big one. Bonefish may have hard crushers to munch on the crabs and shrimp and worms that they catch, but they also have pretty soft mouths and a boga grip + that shaky bonefish = some significant injuries to the bonefish.
One of my favorite fishing blogs, The Trout Underground, covered the issue some time back.
The Bad Idea Jeans Boga
On the rather long list of stuff I didn’t know about you can add the growing body of knowledge regarding bonefish catch and release mortality.
It turns out that, depending on what is lurking nearby and how long it took to take that picture, mortality of bonefish in the R part of the C&R equation can be up to 40%. FORTY PERCENT! Holy $h1t!
(UPDATE: the study referenced here the mortality rate for bonefish that had lost equilibrium was about 30%, another study pointed toward 40%)
Forty percent… as a trout C&R angler, I’m used to thinking of that number more like 3-5%. 40% just seems totally unacceptable and I hope if you are reading this, you’d find it unacceptable as well.
How this came about… scientists, anglers, the Bahamas, bonefish… an intriguing mix that yielded some really interesting and important findings.
Whether a bonefish had or had not lost equilibrium was a significant predictor of predation, with bonefish losing equilibrium being over six times more likely to suffer predation than those that did not lose equilibrium (sciency stuff removed here). All other variables measured during the study (total length, angling time, handling time, air exposure time, bleeding, and water temperature) were not directly related to predation risk.
Fish that were preyed upon did not spend significantly more time further from mangroves than fish that were not preyed upon. In fact, following release 17 (20%) bonefish were observed swimming into open water (N2.5 m deep) rather than staying in close proximity to the shore line or in shallow water.
Longer air exposure and overall handling times were significant predictors of the loss of equilibrium in angled bonefish. Angling time, total length, water temperature, and bleeding at the hooking site were not significant predictors of equilibrium loss.
If you want to read it straight from the abstract, you can find it here, courtesy of Cooke Lab at Carlton University (Canadian). (Thanks Steve for the hook up on this study.)
So, what does this all mean? It means dropping the Hero Shot is a really, really good idea if you care about that particular fish living. If you can take a pic of that fish in the water, great… but if you do what I did on my last trip and take the fish out of the water (or have the guide take the fish out of the water) for an extensive photo shoot… well… it won’t go well for the fish and it may only have a couple of minutes left to live.
If the fish is unable to right itself when you put it back in the water, that fish is in trouble. It could even be that these stressed fish even leave a trail of chemicals behind them that predators like Lemon Sharks zero in on.
Jason Lozano, one of the anglers involved in the study had this to say…
With 15 seconds of air exposure 80% of the fish we released in one day were killed by lemons or cudas within 2 mins. If the fished avoided contact with the predator longer than 2 mins their chances increased substantially.
Jason pointed out that some flats clearly had more predators than others. If you are fishing a flat with more cudas or sharks and you take that fish out for the glory/hero shot to the point it loses equilibrium when it is released, well, that fish will likely die soon.
So, to review… don’t take the fish out of the water. It’s a bad idea if you want the fish to survive.
UPDATE: In the study referenced above, bonefish that had lost equilibrium had a mortality rate of 30%, while bonefish that did not lose equilibrium had a mortality rate of about 4%.
Bad Idea…
Knowing what I know now, I wouldn’t have taken this picture.
Good idea…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SfbGI3DuFrI&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xcfcfcf&feature=player_embedded&fs=1
This is Fly is a great e-mag focused two things… fly fishing and not being all stuffy. They do a great job on both fronts.
While checking out their latest issue (#20), I saw an article from one of my fav’s, Aaron Adams, Executive Director of the Bonefish & Tarpon Trust. In the article, Aaron is hopping from Florida over to the Bahamas for some epic fishing while pondering why more folks aren’t pissed off that Florida bonefishing has declined significantly since the days of Ted Williams.
Those that know (I don’t, by the way) will tell you that there are fewer fish around, all the dumb ones have left and the game is just harder than it used to be and harder than it really should be.
There are remedies, actions that could be taken if enough people raised their voices to be heard by those in the places of power, but nothing will happen if more folks don’t get barking mad.
Where I live, in California, we may be seeing the last of once mighty salmon runs. One of my favorites places on earth, the McCloud River, once had a salmon run estimated at one million fish, but now sits behind Shasta Dam, while the Klamath River is at 20% of it’s historic numbers and they will likely disappear all together by the time the dams are taken out… in, maybe, 2025 or so. Our the concrete symbols of progress have proven to be be destroyer of species, towns, industries and native peoples.
Let’s learn our lessons. Let’s start speaking up and try to at least keep what we have now and maybe even see it improve a bit. Wouldn’t that be nice?
Think about the day when bonefishing in Florida used to be like the video below, get angry about what has been lost, and write a big, fat check to the Bonefish & Tarpon Trust so they can do what needs to be done.
