I am sure you caught the front page article in the Post and Courier this past Sunday about the plight of the yellowfin tuna off of the SC coast and how the fish have basically dissappeared.
I am always curious to how the general public responds to articles like these. 9 out of 10 readers may not even know what a yellowfin tuna is or what it looks like.
The more suprising aspect was that the usually active “comments” section that follow the story had not one comment. This strikes me as odd as most front page articles garner at least a few comments. Heck the story about voting machines being tested in the local section got 3 comments.
Does that mean no one cares? Maybe I am reading the tea leaves too closely. Or maybe the era of the sportsman is dying out. Are people too busy playing on their iphones to be concerned about a fish they will never see or catch?
Very sad but true story!! But us here in the states can’t even keep ANY red snapper or BSB or Grouper but can’t regulate some of the netting and/or long lining!!! Looks to me there is a bigger problem than us the recreational fisherman!!! Thanks for sharing this article!!!
I still think it’s environmental. If you look on the google maps, there is a huge ridge that goes from the Abacos side of the bahamas straight to the Outer Banks, which is WELL OFFSHORE of our waters. I would bet that there is a hell of an upwelling there. It would seem reasonable that is the tuna highway. I think that over the next 10-20 years, there will be another “shift” in weather\currents, etc that make the waters over the ridge less favorable and they will scatter and appear to just show up out of nowhere again. Kind of cyclical…
This year was one of the best YFT and bigeye tuna bites from Virginia and north. It is cyclical as Jason states.
and “NO” noone else cares, unfortunately. You should have seen the looks when I wouldn’t touch the tuna ceviche a friend was serving on New Year’s Eve. 99% of people think fish comes from Publix.
I still think it’s environmental. If you look on the google maps, there is a huge ridge that goes from the Abacos side of the bahamas straight to the Outer Banks, which is WELL OFFSHORE of our waters. I would bet that there is a hell of an upwelling there. It would seem reasonable that is the tuna highway. I think that over the next 10-20 years, there will be another “shift” in weather\currents, etc that make the waters over the ridge less favorable and they will scatter and appear to just show up out of nowhere again. Kind of cyclical…
Anyway, that’s my theory and I am sticking to it…
It is enviromental…but what I don’t get is why there is some assumption about the effects in SC from a fish that was tagged in the Bahamas and caught south of the equator. There is growing local concern that by us changing the drainage of the major rivers to built those striper lakes and hydroplants, we have altered how the water mixes offshore. It is a hypothesis.
It is also my understanding that a particular South America directed targeting of yellowfin fishery is the gauge for productivity from a global economic trade point of view for the Atlantic.
It is also from my understanding that those net boats that harvest ballyhoo from Chavis-land are also used to net yellowfin and other tuna in the Carribean (illegally). Ironic huh?
I do like how the article ends condemning human consumption of seafood. More of the same “anti-life,” “anti-capitalist,” and passing the blame idealogy. More of the can’t care always beliefs and distortion.
If fishing pressure had anything to do with where yellow fin tuna were distributed, as implied in the article, the aforementioned tagged yellow fin would not have been caught in the Gulf of Guinea arguably the geographic location with the highest fishing pressure in the world. ICCAT’s September 2011 stock assessment stated for the first time that the Atlantic population is over fished and that overfishing is occurring yet they did nothing to stop it.