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Q&A HOME • BRAD CHASE • MOLLY LUTCAVAGE
• STEVE WEINER • BARBARA BLOCK • BILL HOGARTH
Steve Weiner
Steve Weiner has been harpooning bluefin tuna off the New England coast since the late 1960s. He is a member of the East Coast Tuna Association and was its president for a number of years. He was also a member of the US ICCAT Advisory Committee for more than 10 years.
Q: How would you characterize the changes in the New England bluefin fishery over the last few years?
A: The bluefin fishing in the Gulf of Maine has been very poor. The month of June has really been the only decent month.
Tuna are not the only living things missing from the Gulf of Maine. Whales, blue sharks, and birds are all somewhere else. And massive numbers of dogfish have made it very difficult to chum or use live baitfish.
As the last few summers have progressed, more and more undersize bluefin have appeared. They feed on krill, small bunker, and small mackerel that are quite abundant in late summer and the fall. They do not need large herring. The presence of these small fish in huge numbers makes the virtual absence of giants even more frustrating.
Q: To what do you attribute these changes?
A: The midwater and pair trawling of herring in Area 1A is having a devastating effect on the tuna fishery in the Gulf of Maine. Anyone who knows anything about bluefin tuna knows that unless there are large aggregations of forage fish – herring, mackerel, sand eels, etc. – tuna won’t come or if they come, they won’t stay.
Many herring and tuna scientists point to other complicated and even far-fetched theories to explain the Gulf of Maine bluefin situation. Instead, they should start with the simple and most obvious issue. We are overfishing herring in Area 1A.
Plus, the midwater and pair trawl gear is so efficient and so deadly that local fishing areas, where most of the tuna have been caught historically, have no herring in them after mid-June. Why would a tuna stay here? Why wouldn’t that tuna swim to Canada where midwater trawling is banned and herring are more bountiful.
It is no mere coincidence that our local fishery has fallen as the midwater herring fleet has grown.
Q: What is the single most important management strategy that the US should pursue domestically?
A: Engage in a study to get a handle on all our forage fishes. We need to understand catch totals, forage totals, discards, and bycatch totals of all of our key forage species – herring, mackerel, whiting, squid, etc.
The reportable catches of herring in Area 1A have been exceeded for years, and this does not account for the dead discards, which, by all reports, are sizeable.
The commercial fishermen I most respect believe the Area 1A herring resource will collapse unless something changes.
The science needs to be better and, until such time as we really are confident in the science, we need to take a precautionary approach with the herring fishery and total allowable catch in Area 1A.
How can we continue to gamble with such an important resource?
Q: What is the single most important management strategy that the US should pursue at ICCAT?
A: We need to get the eastern Atlantic bluefin catches under control, as well as demand a larger minimum size limit.
We also have to get the Japanese longline catch under control in the central Atlantic. US and Canadian fishermen have been conserving for years, but the Japanese and European Community countries have reaped all the benefits.
Bill Hogarth, in his role as US ICCAT commissioner and, this year, as ICCAT chairman, needs to show leadership and toughness and protect this critical resource. It is time for the US to again demand a drastic catch reduction in the central and eastern Atlantic while refusing any further cuts in the west.
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