South Atlantic Council set to debate issues
critical to recreational anglers
The upcoming meeting of the South Atlantic Fishery Management Council Sept. 12-16 in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, is one that could greatly impact the future of recreational angling in the region. Among the items up for discussion are an ad hoc, precedent-setting reallocation of dolphin from the recreational sector to the commercial sector, and a limited entry program for the charter/for-hire industry that would serve as the first step to privatization of marine resources.
The vast majority of dolphin harvest has historically occurred in the recreational sector, which depends on an abundance of the fish to ensure anglers have the opportunity to catch some. In fact, the original Dolphin-Wahoo Fishery Management Plan recognized the importance of dolphin to the recreational sector and the looming potential conflict:
Owing to the significant importance of the dolphin/wahoo fishery to the recreational fishing community in the Atlantic, the goal of this fishery management plan is to maintain the current harvest level of dolphin and insure that no new fisheries develop. With the potential for effort shifts in the historical longline fisheries for sharks, tunas, and swordfish, these shifts or expansions into nearshore coastal waters to target dolphin could compromise the current allocation of the dolphin resource between recreational and commercial user groups. Further, these shifts in effort in the commercial fishery, dependent upon the magnitude (knowing that some dolphin trips may land over 25,000 pounds in a single trip) could result in user conflict and localized depletion in abundance.
This conflict has occurred. The historic commercial fishery was largely composed of incidental catches made while targeting other species, but that changed significantly in 2014 and 2015 when dolphin caught in the commercial longline fishery increased substantially. In 2015, the commercial fishery was closed early because it caught its entire