"LIMMITED ENTRY?” (Point Pleasant, NJ)

Limited entry is a term used mostly in terms of commercial fishing when the governing body (NMFS) decides that no one else is allowed to enter a fishery, in this, the country that claims to be the leader of the FREE world.

Yesterday morning I heard a commotion on the street just outside my house and went to investigate. There were six young kids around twelve years old attempting to push a twelve foot aluminum boat to the block down the street from my house. They had a hand truck under the stern and a skateboard under the bow with a rope tied to it so they could pull.
The very next part of their “day out fishing,” project was a broken wagon with two life jackets and a three hp motor. Another young, fisherman to be, was struggling with four more life jackets and three fishing poles.

They informed me, when I asked if they needed some help, that they couldn’t launch the boat at Curtis Avenue boat ramp because they didn’t have a key (the only boat ramp on the Point Pleasant side of the Manasquan River) and that the Maxon Avenue beach would not let them launch because it was for swimming, and fishing from a small pier.

I had them wait while I went into my garage (which contains everything that was ever made) and found a bracket with four small wheels, which mounts to the transom of any small boat. My eighty eight year old neighbors father originally owned it! It fit perfectly and one of the kids could drag the boat home by himself and the motor was carried in the hand truck they had been using. They all thanked me for their new mode of boat transportation (hummm?) and disappeared up the road.

I was truly saddened watching them disappear over the hill knowing all they wanted to do was go fishing. It reminded me of all those summer days my brothers and I spent growing up on the Manasquan River, fishing and water skiing, crabbing and seining, yet it might have been all for the good. Had they ever been able to launch their boat, find some bait and go fishing… they probably would have been stopped by the fish police and had everything confiscated because they were in possession of an illegal, seventeen and three quarter inch fluke because I don’t think anyone of those kids had a ruler! Hookem and Hackem!

Chinese seafood targeted in new food safety effort

St. Louis Post-Dispatch

WASHINGTON - In March, inspectors checking Chinese seafood arriving at U.S. ports made some unsettling discoveries: fish infected with salmonella in Baltimore and Seattle and shrimp with banned veterinary drugs in Florida.

Meanwhile, a shipment intercepted in Los Angeles March 19 labeled "channel catfish" wasn't catfish at all, though records don't say what it was.

"A lot of those products coming in from overseas, you have no clue as to what is in them," said Paul Hitchens, an aquaculture specialist in southern Illinois, where cut-rate Chinese catfish are threatening the livelihood of fish farmers.

China has rapidly become the leading exporter of seafood to the United States, flooding supermarkets and restaurants. And while China agreed late last year to improve the safety of its food exports, the inspectors' March findings were not isolated cases.

According to Food and Drug Administration records examined by the Post-Dispatch, inspectors turned away nearly 400 shipments of tainted seafood in a year's time from China.

The records told a troubling tale, but even more troubling was what they didn't tell. Only a tiny fraction of imports are inspected at all, and even fewer are tested.

It's a challenge the United States is just starting to confront: In increasingly globalized food supply, the government - using an antiquated inspection system - is unprepared to keep Americans safe from the dangers arriving at our ports.

"When you look at less than 1 percent of shipments, and sample and test maybe one-fifth of those, there's no way you can protect the American food supply," said Michael Taylor, a former FDA official who is professor of health policy now at George Washington University.

Seafood is considered one of the most risky imports, and those from China have risen steadily. When the FDA does turn away shipments, usually it is because they contain veterinary drugs, among them nitrofurans, a family of antibiotics banned by the FDA because tests showed they cause cancer in animals.

More than 100 of the shipments were rejected for being filthy, decomposed or otherwise unfit for consumption, according to the records.

In December, after disclosures about Chinese imports of poisonous pet food and lead-filled toys, the FDA and the Chinese government agreed on new procedures aimed at preventing tainted and dangerous food and drugs from reaching American shores. But skeptics question whether the new, voluntary arrangement has sufficient teeth.

Meanwhile, Chinese seafood is a prime target of legislation in Congress to revamp decades-old inspection mechanisms in hopes of protecting Americans in a globalized food system.

FDA officials are requesting new authority, including the ability to license private companies to assist with inspections. But the Bush administration has signaled opposition to key provisions that would require regular inspections in foreign lands and limit ports where food can arrive to docks with FDA labs.

Former FDA officials argue that change is urgently needed.

William Hubbard, formerly the FDA's associate commissioner, noted in an interview that the FDA's inspection system was designed early last century when the big challenge was finding bugs or mold in arriving barrels of commodities like flour or molasses. Now, the U.S. gets millions of shipments of foreign food each year from around the world.

Hubbard, who retired in 2005, recalled inspectors reporting particularly disturbing methods of Chinese aquaculture: raising chickens in cages kept above fish-ponds - a potential source of the salmonella in seafood, he said.

"Increasingly, the world is moving in a better direction in food safety and we're falling behind. As our system becomes more antiquated and more ineffective, the world is sending us their junk," said Hubbard.

Imports of seafood have surged dramatically in recent years and account for nearly 80 percent of the seafood Americans consume. That translates to 4.8 billion pounds of imported seafood last year out of the 5.8 billion pounds consumed.

Supermarket frozen food sections are routinely filled with imported fish filets, shrimp and crab meat - which must contain country-of-origin labels on packaging.

No such disclosure is required for fish served in restaurants, so people generally can't know with certainty where the fish or shrimp they ordered originated.

Records at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration show how surging Chinese imports are meeting the demand of seafood-loving Americans. For instance, between 2000 and 2007, imports of farm-raised tilapia from China - a staple in restaurants - soared nine-fold, to more than 240 million pounds.

Imports of catfish have been especially vexing to U.S. seafood interests given the whiskered bottom-feeder's popularity in parts of America.

In four years, imports of Chinese catfish - or fish so described - increased from 1.6 million pounds to more than 22 million pounds last year, posing stiff and sometimes crippling competition for U.S. catfish farmers.

Jeff McCord, spokesman for the Catfish Institute, said that many of the more than 1,000 catfish-growers he represents saw their revenues plummet.

"It has led to many family farmers throwing in the towel and the loss of hundreds of jobs of farm workers and in fish-processing plants," he said.

In southern Illinois, fish-farmers blame the 2003 collapse of a catfish processing plant in Pinckneyville, Ill., on a flood of Chinese imports that they say nearly cut in half the price they could get.

Even now, efforts in Illinois to build a successful industry with farm-raised prawns and bass are stunted by imports, said Hitchens, the aquaculture specialist at Southern Illinois University.

"We know we can't compete with them, so we're trying other angles," said Hitchens, who arranges sales of live, farm-raised seafood to markets in St. Louis, Chicago and as far away as Toronto.

Hitchens sounded a common refrain in the American aquaculture industry: "Here in Illinois, we're very conscious of trying to get out a fresh product that is natural and without antibiotics.

Echoed Brenda Lyons, whose family grows prawns in Sandoval, Ill.: "We're not going to compete with China. We're not going to grow a bunch of junk. We're selling live, fresh fish. And they can't supply that from over there."

It's usually impossible to track down the source of food-borne illnesses which, according to the Centers for Disease Control, occur 76 million times annually in the United States, resulting in 325,000 hospitalizations and 5,000 deaths,

But fish - particularly uncooked or improperly cooked seafood - is a common source of problems. And the rapidly growing imports from China pose a new threat that needs attention, said Caroline Smith DeWaal, a food safety expert at the Washington-based nonprofit Center for Science in the Public Interest.

In China and elsewhere in the developing world, "the ability to produce food and ship it globally far surpasses their ability to ensure it's safe," she said.

Experts agree that change is needed to protect Americans from dangerous imports. The question now is how much change Congress will demand and how much change the Bush administration and the FDA will be willing to accept.

Last year, U.S. and China officials began discussing changes amid disturbing revelations about dangerous products from poisoned pet food to shoddy tires.

In a "Memorandum of Agreement" reached by the FDA and their Chinese counterparts in December, seafood was accorded the status of "high-risk" because of ongoing problems. Now, says the FDA, both sides are pursuing initiatives that the FDA hopes will lead to an FDA office in China and an electronic certification system for imports arriving in the United States.

Dr. Murray Lumpkin, an FDA official who helped negotiate the arrangement, said that the United States and China are in a "confidence-building" mode right now with both sides showing "commitment." Lumpkin, who traveled to China recently, noted that the Chinese have not yet said yes to an FDA office in Beijing.

"This is going to take some time," said Lumpkin, the FDA's deputy commissioner for international and special programs. "But I think that both governments realize it is not helpful for either country to have tainted fish come in to the U.S. It doesn't help in terms of the safety we demand and it doesn't help the China brand."

Meanwhile, skeptics question the potential of an arrangement that lacks assurance that FDA inspectors will get access to production facilities and ponds where fish are grown.

The University of Georgia's Michael Doyle is a member of the National Academy of Sciences panel that has studied food safety. He said it's too early to gauge the success of efforts to improve seafood safety.

"It's not going to be an overnight fix," he said. "The FDA needs to reinvent itself."

March 8, 2008

I suppose all the fluke fisherman should get down on collective hands and knees to thank the mind numbed robots for the 18” size limit that we all have to deal with this season. The good news is we will be able to keep 8 per day. The success rate for an angler attempting to find 8 fluke on any given day, 18” or above, will be the same as the New Jersey hunter trying to bag a moose in Mantoloking.

Why is it that regulators make us fisherman seek out the fish that are the biggest breeders and by all accounts, the bigger the fish the more chemicals (pcb’s) fish contain? It seems to me it would be a lot healthier for the general public to eat the smaller fish, like we were able to do years ago. Which reminds me of a story that I read years ago. I’m not sure if I remember all the details, but it goes something like this.

The year was about 0030 and there were a lot of starving people sitting on the banks of a river called the Nile. There were no fish to be found by a guy named St. Peter and the situation was desperate. Along comes a guy named Jesus who gave St. Peter some secret loran bearings and told him to go cast his nets so he could feed his people. St. Peter untied his lines and jumped in his center console along with some of his followers and a couple of 4.0 reels tied to sticks. It turns out on the first set the boat was full of fish so the crew headed back to shore, thankful that there were no minimum size regulations. It was a miracle of biblical proportions.

When they reached shore it was brought to their attention that Jesus multiplied what little bread they had to feed the masses. All was well on the banks of the Nile that day without the help of the National Marine Fisheries Service. Fish is food…so EAT IT!

Where the buoys are

During the mid seventies when sludge from New York was still being dumped twelve to fifteen miles off the New Jersey coast, the Federal Government sent an outfit (EPA) from the west coast to do some research off the Jersey coast. While working aboard the research vessel, Atlantic Twin, my brother and I had another opportunity to witness “scientific research” at its best.

For a particular research project in the mid 70's, the EPA established a two part plan: 1) deploy two very intricate underwater sensors designed to analyze the temperature, salinity and in general, water quality; and 2) determine if the sludge being dumped spread all over the ocean or was the sludge and pollution contained in what was called “The NY Bight.” One sensor would be stationary and anchored to the ocean floor. The second sensor would be set about mid-water (between the bottom and the surface) and secured to a small sea anchor so it would drift with the current and marked with a buoy so we could retrieve it at a later date. Both sensors were to be monitored twenty-four hours a day for five days.

Loading equipment and securing it usually took a whole day but we knew there was a small window of opportunity to complete this research project (five days) so we worked diligently to accommodate this group of highly educated research scientists.

While steaming (pretty nautical, huh?) toward our coordinates I was asked if we had anything on-board to measure the length of the line they were to use on their buoy. I found a yardstick from our tool locker. It was summarily dismissed. I was told that the line had to be measured in meters because this was “scientific research” (pooh, pooh!). These “highly educated” scientists eventually decided to measure the line the old-fashioned way, which was to grab the line with each hand and spread your arms across your chest (wing span). This method has been used by commercial fisherman for centuries and is pretty accurate but it did not seem very “scientific”.

Upon reaching the station everyone was assembled on deck to review the procedure for releasing the gear overboard. The crane would lift a 700 lb. railroad wheel, which the researchers brought all the way from Seattle, Washington. The wheel was to be used as the anchor for the stationary, mid-water sensor and released over the stern of the boat. The wheel/anchor would be dropped over the stern and followed by the attached line. To prevent the line from getting tangled in the sensor two scientists would wait until there was about twenty feet of line left before they tossed their highly sophisticated equipment, followed by some more line and finally a buoy which would float and serve to mark the location.

Everyone on the boat watched intently when: the anchor was dropped; followed by the line; followed by the sophisticated equipment; followed by some more line; and finally the buoy… Well, apparently one of the “smart” people measured the line improperly and the buoy disappeared beneath the surface. There was stunned disbelief on the faces of the scientists and hysterical laughter coming from the crew. I had to pick my brother, Bill, up off the deck having initially thought he hurt himself falling down. He was fine other than a stomachache from laughing. It gets better-- standby.

After the laughter…and the tears subsided, the scientific researchers got together and decided we should try to retrieve the gear with a grappling hook. You should know that before loran C, we used a system called loran A which accuracy was only good to about one thousand feet and not fifty feet as with loran C, or five feet with GPS. Hours went by and there was no sign of their $15, 000 to $20,000 gear which disappeared with the 700 lb anchor and marker buoy. Recognizing they could not just abandon this expensive gear that they brought from the west coast, they decided we would go back to port and rent sonar equipment! (Did you know you could rent sonar equipment?)

For the next day I held pieces of steel while our engineer, Scotty Anderson, welded everything needed to support the part of the sonar to be submerged. The aft cabin on our vessel soon contained all the rented scopes and headphones needed for our sonar search.

Back on station later that day the transducer was lowered into the water. The scientists began mulling around the big sonar screen. The chief scientist put on the headphones that looked like something out of a World War II submarine movie and the “PINGS” began. Back and forth, back and forth we went in a search pattern trying to locate items that would make or break the scientist in charge.

The tension was palpable and the silence deafening for more than three hours. Scotty and I stuck our heads in the door where the only thing that could be herd was the “ping, ping, ping” along with a lot of heavy breathing. Scotty broke the silence by asking a question we all wondered: “How do you know when you lock onto the lost equipment?” All hell broke loose when the sonar operator took off the headphones, threw them to the ground and screamed, “How the fuck do I know, I never operated one of these things before!” You can't make this stuff up.

February 5, 2008

Getting to know the enemy

Picture departing the dock with your family for a relaxing day on the water, and upon reaching your favorite fishing spot, you see a huge buoy with a sign that says, "NO FISHING."

The Pew Foundation continues it's all out assault on fisherman, wherever they may be. While reviewing their web site I came across some material that everyone should be aware of if you ever intend to put a line
in the water in the future

January 17, 2008

Science and common sense don't mix

Working as a deck hand on a boat during the early to mid seventies was rewarding in many ways. It allowed me to be around the water which was always a top priority while I was growing up. The job paid well and while we were out to sea I was unable to spend any of the money so saving was easy. Little did I know that working with scientists would provide such an assortment of humorous events for my brother Bill and I to reminisce about over the years. Many of our trips were for the purpose of doing bottom grabs which consisted of picking up, with our deck crane, what looked like a giant clam upside down, and free spooling it to the ocean floor.

Prior to releasing this (Smith-McIntyre) bottom grab, it had to be cocked with a steel bar while a second person had to put a pin in the triggering mechanism. Upon retrieving this bottom grab, the sediment would then be analyzed. This was surely hazardous duty for the people who sorted through the muck, for the smell was hard enough to take at my station twenty feet away operating the crane. Lighting on deck at nighttime was certainly adequate, but some of the scientists had some trouble putting the pin in while someone else pulled hard on the spring mechanism with the steel bar. On one of those occasions I heard some one say, "Is the pin in yet?" as he was pulling down hard on the lever, and again he said, "Is the pin in yet?" to which the reply was, "I think so." It wasn't...the steel bar hit the guy who was suppose to put the pin in right on the top of his head and he went down for the count. We had to immediately stop the bleeding and took him to Sandy Hook, which was not too far away. He survived his injury and the next day he was back on the boat ready to resume his duties as chief mud expert, only this time everyone had brand new bright yellow miners helmets with adjustable head lamps.

Adjusting to their new equipment was somewhat problematic. Apparently no one read the instruction manual concerning the light. The educated idiot who was suppose to put the pin in the bottom grab had his light beam shining up and to the right, but instead of adjusting the light he kept tilting his head down and to the left in a fruitless attempt to focus the light on his target area. You can't make these stories up! We, as fisherman, are suppose to trust that the information we receive from their studies are factual, but I have seen first hand their bumbling ways and I can't believe that most of their research isn't as flawed as the people who obtain it. My distain for the NMFS as you can plainly see is a learned behavior.

January 12, 2008

Incompetence when it comes to research

Many years ago, during the mid seventies, I worked on a boat named the Atlantic Twin that was chartered by the NMFS to do trawl surveys up and down the east coast. I'm not quite sure how they chose the exact place to tow a net to retrieve their samples, but they assured us that the spots that we had to tow the nets were "Scientifically" predetermined. Before each watch, (which were 6 hours long 24 hours a day) the captain and the first mate were given the coordinates. (Loran "A" back in those days) and it was up to them to put us on the exact spot.

We departed Sandy hook and went from the end of Long Island to St. Augustine Florida over the next month making 15 minute tows in an attempt to get real information on fish stocks. Some of the planed sample areas were clearly in areas where it was impossible to drag nets on the sea floor because of wrecks, rocks or other obstructions. Many nets were torn up (rim wracked) and lost. One such encounter brought forth the first bit of genius from a scientist that truly floored me. After loosing two complete rigs on the ocean floor the head scientist asked if we could make the same tow but instead of north to south try it from east to west! ...So we did...Yep, one more lost rig!!

In the fall of the year commercial fluke fishing is usually pretty good down around Cape May and the Delaware river and we looked forward to catching some so we could fillet some for ourselves to freeze and take home, although everything that came up in the net was thrown back after measurements were taken by the Scientists. We were determined to bring some home to eat. I asked the head guy if maybe we should go near one of the commercial boats and try a tow or two for they surely knew where the fish were. I was reminded that the spots were predetermined and we could not vary. We were, probably the only boat in that area that couldn't catch enough for dinner. A couple of days later I overheard two of, "Them," say that they thought fluke stocks were in serious trouble since they didn't see many of them, yet there were 20 to 30 commercial boats in that same area that were making a living. One of those boats was from Point Pleasant and we later found out the fishing was terrific.

It became clear to me that common sense was not then, and is not now part of the National Marine Fisheries Service.

Only a few years ago a government research boat was doing the same kind of trawl surveys and their results were very poor on some fish. When questioned on their research they became very arrogant and said their surveys were sound science. A local fisherman challenged their research and and convinced them to tow next to each other and the results were nothing short of astonishing. The local fisherman caught many times more than the research vessel. It was later found out that the towing cables on the research boat were improperly marked which made it impossible for the net to open properly! You can't make these stories up. More to come on NMFS incompetence....remember, "Hookemandhackem."

January 3, 2008

The National Marine Fisheries Service keeps telling the fishing public that the information they use to justify fishing quotas is, "The best science available." Why is it that I have asked over 400 of my customers this past year, two questions:

1) How many times have you caught the limit this past season?

2) How many times has anyone from NMFS or any other government agency, asked you how many fish have you caught on any given day, week or month?

The answer to question number one was under twenty but that doesn't mean everyone on the boat caught the limit.

The answer to question number two was ...NEVER ! That is correct, not one out of 400+ people that I personally asked ever had any kind of contact with NMFS about how many fish they actually caught.

It is odd to me that the NMFS can claim that we have over fished the quota when few people are catching their limit.

In conclusion, the information that is used to establish fishing quotas has to be not just misleading but utter nonsense. It is impossible to get anywhere close to an accurate count if you don't ask the participants in the fluke fishery ???