TBF Seeks to Stop Commerical Purse Seining in the Bahamas

© John Richardson

**Update March 3, 2010** The Billfish Foundation wishes to thank all of you who spoke out against the issuance of a permit for purse seine or net fishing to operate in Bahamian waters and to applaud the Bahamian government for rejecting the petition.
 
A public meeting was held Monday evening (March 1, 2010) and the overwhelming majority of those present spoke out against issuing a permit. After the meeting, the government issued the following statement:
 
"Having regard to the importance of sportfishing to the Tourism Industry...legislation will prohibit the use of purse seine or net fishing to ensure that all fisheries resources, including migratory fish, are maintained at a sustainable level.
 
TBF President Ellen Peel and scientist Russell Nelson sent a strong statement that was read during the course of the meeting. Peel and Nelson both argued against the possibility of authorizing the use of purse seine gear or net fishing in the waters of the Bahamas. They cited not only the irreparable harm such practices would cause to billfish resources and other marine species, but also the negative impacts to sportfishing tourism."

**Original Post**

The Billfish Foundation (TBF) has been fighting on the behalf of billfish, and the sport fishing community, for more than 20 years. In that time, they have worked with governments and tourism groups to help save endangered fish populations in the US, Australia, Costa Rica, Mexico and beyond. Now, they're fighting in the Bahamas to help protect billfish from the damaging, and potentially catastrophic, interests of commercial fishermen.

Below is a letter from TBF's director, Ellen Peel, as well as some persuasive evidence as to why the Bahamian government should not permit a commercial purse seining operation in the waters of the Bahamas. Please do your part to help TBF stop this process by contacting the Honorable Larry Cartwright, Minister of Agriculture and Marine Resources, at Larrycartwright@bahamas.gov.bs and sharing your thoughts about these actions.

Letter from Ellen Peel, TBF's President

Grand Bahama Regional Committee of the Bahamas National Trust

Ref: Town Meeting, Netting of Tuna

© TBFThe Billfish Foundation (TBF) is pleased to have this opportunity to respond to your interest in matters relating to possibly permitting a commercial purse seining operation within the waters of the Bahamas. TBF is the world's leading organization advancing sound science and responsible management and conservation of marlin, sailfish, spearfish, swordfish and tunas around the world.  As President of TBF I regret that I cannot attend tonight's Town Meeting because of an inflexible longstanding commitment I have for our first Board of Directors meeting of the year, in Costa Rica; I respectfully submit the following comments.

My expertise on the subject at hand is based on my 14 years of experience as President of TBF, 14 years of service on the U.S. Advisory Committee to the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT), 14 years on the U.S. Highly Migratory Species (HMS) Advisory Panel and my current designation by the U.S. Department of State to represent the United States as the Commissioner for Recreational Fishing before ICCAT. In addition, I serve on the Board of Directors of the Gulf and Caribbean Fisheries Institute.  Prior to taking on the responsibilities at TBF I served as Special Counsel for HMS for the Center for Marine Conservation (now Ocean Conservancy) in Washington, D.C. and in St. Petersburg, Florida. My law training above the Juris Doctorate level focused on Marine Resources.

Authorizing the use of purse seine gear in the waters of the Bahamas would cause irreparable harm not only to billfish resources in your waters, but also to marine mammals, threatened and endangered sea turtles, sharks and many other species.  In addition, it would lead to the devastation of your nation's sportfishing tourism industry, which spends millions each year to have the opportunity to encounter a billfish.  Atlantic billfishing is a responsible fishery with most of the fish caught and released. Many jobs depend on the availability of billfish and tuna in your waters, not just those hired to work on sportfishing vessels, but also in hotels, restaurants, tournament producers, service providers and a wide array of related activities.

Atlantic marlin, both blue and white, are seriously overfished, only North Atlantic bluefin tuna is in worse shape and they are being considered later this month for a CITES listing that would prohibit international trade of the species.  The possibility of a CITES listing is the direct result of ICCAT along with nations not implementing responsible conservation and management measures, coupled with the lack of law enforcement and monitoring measures needed to insure healthy stocks for long term sustainability.  A listing of bluefin under CITES would send a needed message that if fishery managers are unwilling to manage responsibly, then Departments or Ministries of Tourism and Natural Resources will force great scrutiny through CITES and within their own governments to take the steps needed to insure healthy oceans and healthy economies for generations to come.

The situation we face today with greatly depleted fish stocks has evolved since World War II as the technology available for finding, catching and keeping fish from our oceans has outpaced the natural resources' ability to reproduce and sustain healthy population levels.  The electronics alone allow purse seine vessels the ability to wrap whole schools of targeted fish, such as yellowfin, and take a wide variety of bycatch species in the same hauls.  Often times the bycatch species support an array of non-consumable industries just as billfish do in your sportfishing tourism businesses, as do a variety of reef fish and marine mammals support a prosperous dive industry in the Bahamas to name a few.   Conservation of the bycatch species caught by commercial vessels must be given more than incidental consideration by governments; this is the Bahamas' opportunity to demonstrate your commitment to marine conservation and the dependent tourism industries by prohibiting purse seine and all nets commercial fisheries in the Bahamas.

It has been three decades, which included years of a lot of restraints on the recreational billfishing community, before the first stock assessments indicated that white marlin stocks were showing some slight increase in population size; this was the most recent assessment in 2006.  While the last assessment for Atlantic blue marlin stocks did not indicate any up turn in the stock biomass, it did indicate a leveling off in their decline, which is an improvement.  Stock assessments for both Atlantic marlin species will be conducted this year.  We at TBF are cautiously optimistic that this year's stock assessments may indicate some increase in their stock abundance as well.  They too were on a downward trajectory for three decades.  Most of the Atlantic marlin mortality comes in the commercial yellowfin tuna fisheries, purse seine and longline fisheries.

In the Bahamas a purse seine operation most likely would want to set on FAD (fish aggregating devices), which increases the deadly effect of the gear.  FADs are increasing as fish stocks are declining and creating an even more vicious circle of death.  Fish are drawn to the floating devices and unknowingly wait as vessel operators receive feedback from the sophisticated FADs letting the operators know when to wrap a particular FAD - when the fish are there, just like shooting fish in a barrel.  Of course there are thousands of unsophisticated FADs used every day to attract fish to be wrapped, even these need to be managed responsibly.

To make the situation worse, the differences in life history characteristics of yellowfin tuna and marlin stocks further contribute to the vulnerability of marlin stocks collapsing with more heavy duty commercial fishing.  More management and conservation attention needs to be paid to Atlantic marlin stocks, not to furthering fishing methods that further their overfishing. The Billfish Foundation strongly urges the Bahamas NOT TO AUTHORIZE PURSE SEINE GEAR in your waters.  TBF equally urges the Bahamas to join the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT), an international regional management organization to help improve the management and conservation of marlin, sailfish, spearfish, swordfish, tunas and sharks.  Each member nation has an equal voice and vote. The Bahamas could be a respected member of ICCAT and help contribute your support for improved Atlantic-wide conservation.

I have included below a report by Dr. Russell Nelson for your further consideration in conjunction with my comments.

Again I regret I could not shate these comments in person about retaining the Bahamas high priority for marine conservation, conservation that is vital to your nation's economy and its ecological treasures. If you have any questions with which TBF might be of assistance, please give me a call at (954) 202-9267 or via email at ellen_peel@billfish.org. I will be back in my office on March 11, but will have some email service available while out of the country and at a subsequent science meeting in Tampa immediately thereafter starting non March 8.

Facts to consider when reviewing a request to permit yellowfin tuna  (YFT) purse seining in Bahamian waters.

My name is Russell Nelson. Following my receipt of a doctorate in Marine Fisheries Ecology I have worked for over 25 years as a research biologist with the U.S. National Marine Fisheries Service, Director of Marine Fisheries for the State of Florida and I now own an international fisheries science consulting firm. I have been a member of the U.S. ICCAT Advisory Panel since its inception in 1990 and have been a member of the U.S. ICCAT delegation for eleven annual meetings. The Billfish Foundation is a client of ours and has asked for this brief review of relevant information. I regret that I cannot attend tonight's meeting in person, but previous commitments have me bound to Costa Rica on a 7 AM flight tomorrow morning.

ICCAT Management

In 1993 ICCAT passed a Resolution calling for no increases in fishing effort for YFT as a precaution against overfishing. This regulation is still in place. The most recent stock assessment for YFT by ICCAT's S Standing Committee on Research and Statistics (http://www.iccat.int/Documents/SCRS/ExecSum/YFT_EN.pdf) found the following:

1. Recent catches (2005 - 2008) have been the lowest since 1974 with a 45% decline since the 1990 peak;
2. The average weight of yellowfin has declined over 505 since the early 1990s;
3. Both assessment models indicated that YFT had been overfished in recent years but declines in recent effort have reduced fishing mortality to slightly below the target level;
4. Any increase in effort will yield small increases in harvest but greatly increase the risk of overfishing; and
5. There is still  a 60% chance that the Atlantic YFT stock is below target levels of MSY.

Fish Aggregating Devices (FADs)

Given my experience in the waters of the Bahamas I do not believe that purse seining for YFT will be an economically productive activity unless the widespread use of FADs accompanies this fishery.  A modern FAD is a far cry from the occasional bit of flotsam in the water. Today Fads can cover acres of surface area and deploy vertical netting and other attracting materials down to a hundred feet.    A vessel may deploy over 100 of these FADS and once placed in the water they are not removed.  FADs can be  equipped with GPS and satellite-linked sonar that gives them the ability to transmit real time information on the location and density of tuna aggregating about the device.  A tuna fleet technician can sit at a computer at a dockside office and use the FAD data and algorithms to calculate how to direct a vessel at sea to move from individual FAD to individual FAD in a manner that maximizes catch and minimizes fuel consumption.

Clearly this type of fishing can be extraordinarily efficient and devastating to local concentrations of tuna stocks. The netting deploys under FADs catches and kills turtles and small marine mammals.   More importantly FADs aggregate a diverse array of pelagic species. Wahoo, dolphinfish, sailfish, marlins an sharks are also attracted by this structure and are taken and killed in purse seining operations.  Bycatch of these other pelagic species can be as high as 2 orders of magnitude greater when purse seines fish on FADs as opposed to free swimming schools of tuna.

The Risk to Sportfishing Tourism

A recent study of the economic impacts of sportfishing tourism in the Los Cabos area of Mexico (Southwick, et al, 2008)  included survey response data on the factors that attracted U.S. anglers to foreign fishing destinations.  The study found that the Bahamas ranked fourth as a desired destination for U.S. anglers who had never traveled abroad to fish. The study also found that if anglers heard that commercial fishing had increased in a favored or potential destination 88% would be "much less likely" to travel to that destination.  The Bahamas has a rich tradition and is favored by many international anglers. The rewards from beginning a purse seine fishery pale in comparison to the value of sportsfishing tourism to this nation.

Summary

As a preferred management strategy I would suggest that the Bahamas would be most favored by rejecting the development of a purse seine fishery just as the government wisely decided to forego the development of a longline fishery in 1993.  There is a high probability that allowing such a fishery to develop would have a negative impact on local concentrations of tunas and other pelagic species important to sportfishing tourism and an equally negative impact on the numbers and frequency of Bahamian visits by tourist anglers.

References

Southwick, R, R Nelson and Jose Antonio Arean Martinez. 2008. The Economic Contributions of Anglers to the Los Cabos Economy.  A report to The Billfish Foundation, fort Lauderdale, U.S.A.