COASTAL CONSERVATION ASSOCIATION NEW YORK SEEKS CHANGES IN TAUTOG MANAGEMENT

WEST BABYLON, NY—In a letter addressed to Gordon Colvin, Director or the Marine Bureau of the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (the “DEC”), Coastal Conservation Association New York (“CCA NY”) outlined a series of measures that it believes DEC should take to rebuild New York’s depleted population of tautog (also known as “blackfish”).

CCA NY’s letter was written in response to a “Discussion Draft” of possible regulatory measures that the DEC distributed at the March 13 meeting of New York’s Marine Resources Advisory Council. New York State is currently facing a requirement, imposed by the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (“ASMFC”), that it reduce 2008 tautog landings by 28.6%. The Discussion Draft circulated by DEC was its attempt to obtain stakeholder input before beginning the formal rulemaking process.

“We are pleased that the Department produced such a comprehensive and thoughtful summary of possible regulatory measures,” notes Brian O’Keefe, Chair of CCA NY’s Government Relations Committee. “CCA New York has been putting together a recommendation for changes in blackfish management for over a year, and we were happy to see that the DEC’s Discussion Draft included every measure that we were contemplating.”

New York’s tautog fishery was historically prosecuted almost entirely by recreational fishers. Most of the harvest took place in the spring and fall, although some tautog were caught throughout the year. However, during the 1980s, two changes dramatically altered the shape of the fishery. One change was the creation of a live-fish market centered in New York City, which paid significantly higher prices for tautog than had previously been available and led to a marked increase in both legal and illegal commercial harvest. The second was the sharp decline in the populations of cod and other species traditionally sought by New York anglers during the winter months. Such decline shifted angler effort onto tautog overwintering in deep water, which were particularly vulnerable to overharvest because they congregated over the limited amount of hard structure (rocks and wrecks) available on the generally sandy ocean bottom off New York. The emerging fisheries constituted new sources of mortality, and the tautog population quickly became overfished. Abundance declined sharply.

“The population crashed in the mid-1980s,” says Charles Witek, CCA NY’s State Chair. “Management efforts to rebuild it have so far been ineffective. Stock size is stalled at the same low level as a decade ago.”

While fisheries regulators haven’t been able to rebuild the tautog population, regulations enacted in the past two decades have managed to entrench the new winter recreational fishery at the expense of traditional fisheries.

“Years ago, we used to be able to catch blackfish from shore,” points out Bill Raab, President of CCA NY. “We could catch them from small boats in Great South Bay during September. Up in Long Island Sound, a few were even available during the summer. Today, because the season starts so late in the year, shore anglers are just about closed out of the fishery, and small boat anglers have to fish in rough late-fall conditions. You don’t see many families fishing for blackfish any more. Mostly, guys are catching them from party boats.”

CCA NY is asking the DEC to replacing the current season, which begins in October, runs all winter, and doesn’t end until after the tautog have spawned, with one which begins earlier in the fall and closes in December, so that more “casual” anglers have a chance to enjoy the fishery. It is also asking that the fishery be closed when the fish enter nearshore waters to spawn.
“Blackfish are too easy to catch in the spring,” says O’Keefe. “They bunch up to spawn in shallow water, and are very vulnerable to harvest. CCA NY believes that New York should adopt regulations similar to those in Connecticut, which doesn’t allow angling while fish are spawning, but opens the season for the summer. That way, the average angler has a chance to catch a blackfish once in a while.”

CCA NY also recognizes the need to reduce the bag limit from the current 10 fish, both to spread out harvest over the longest practical season and to make it less likely that unlicensed commercial fishers posing as anglers will illegally sell their catch.

“Illegal commercial harvest may be the single biggest obstacle to tautog recovery,” opines Witek. “The urban live-fish market is so lucrative that a lot of people are willing to take the chance of breaking the law in exchange for a big payday. Law enforcement officers are spread thin, there’s not much risk of getting caught and fines imposed by judges are low enough to be a ‘cost of doing business’ that is overshadowed by the potential profits. Without regulations capable of reining in the illicit fishery, there is little hope that the tautog population will rebound.”
New York’s commercial tautog fishery is currently “open-access”, meaning that any licensed commercial fisher may participate. However, the legal harvest is extremely small, about 52,500 pounds in 2005, the last year for which final data is available. Managing a harvest that small in an open-access fishery is virtually impossible.

“New York must institute a limited access fishery as soon as possible,” says O’Keefe. “Only people who landed blackfish in the last five years should qualify for a permit. Then the DEC can control harvest the same way it does in the striped bass fishery, giving each fisherman tags that have to be put on each blackfish when it is caught. When you run out of tags, your season is over.”

Tags would also help keep illegally-caught blackfish out of retail markets, since the sale of untagged fish could be prohibited. Under such a system, a market, shipper or wholesaler in possession of an untagged blackfish would be committing an illegal act, and it wouldn’t be necessary for the DEC to prove that the fish wasn’t lawfully caught. At the same time, requiring anyone who catches, handles, ships or sells a tautog to register with the DEC, and report all transactions, would help to curb the illegal market. However, given the price that people are willing to pay for illegal tautog, CCA NY is not convinced that even such restrictive measures will stop the illicit harvest.

“There’s just too much money in the illegal fishery,” notes Raab. “If there are people willing to pay enough to keep the market going, there will always be other people willing to take risks to supply that market. In the end, we suspect that the only practical way to shut down the illegal commercial tautog fishery may be to shut down the entire commercial tautog fishery.”

In 2005, the aggregate value of New York’s legal commercial tautog landings was less than $130,000, roughly one-quarter of one percent of the value of New York’s total commercial landings in that year. Thus, the economic impact of a prohibition on commercial tautog harvest would be minor, and a price that the state should be willing to pay in order to end the illegal fishery and rebuild the state’s tautog population.

“The state’s primary obligation is to protect the public’s interest in a healthy, rebuilt tautog population,” states Witek. “I grew up on Long Island Sound, and remember when tautog were plentiful. You could catch them on just about every rockpile during the fall. Today’s anglers should be permitted to experience the same abundance, and we should never be willing to accept anything less than a fully recovered stock.”