The Proud Mary Ellen sits at a dock in Dania Beach, stripped of its buoys and navigational equipment.

The old boat still mounts a huge metal spool on its deck, loaded with 17 miles of monofilament line. On a normal day, before the federal government intervened, the crew would be preparing to drive it to the waters off southeast Florida, crank out the line and haul in a load of swordfish, mahi-mahi and tuna.

But on March 1, in a conservation move that has sparked lawsuits and angry letters from members of Congress, the federal government banned longline fishing off the east coast of Florida. The ban is intended to stop the accidental catch of marlin, sailfish, juvenile swordfish and other protected species. But it has hit hard along the docks of Pompano Beach, Dania Beach, Hypoluxo, Fort Pierce and other cities with commercial boats.

"I'm standing here with mortgage payments to SunTrust on vessels I can't fish," said Vince Pyle, owner of the Proud Mary Ellen and four other boats. "I was put out of business and left with debt. This is an atrocity."

Longlines first appeared in U.S. waters in the early 1960s. Like other technical innovations -- drift nets, sonar, electrified harpoons and spotter planes -- they have allowed modern fishermen to scour living things from the ocean with unprecedented efficiency. Stretching 20, 30 or 40 miles, hung with up to 2,000 baited hooks, they can haul vast quantities of swordfish, tuna and other big-money fish.

But the lines also hook creatures by accident, such as underweight swordfish and species that cannot be taken legally. Known as by-catch, they must be thrown back, dead or alive. In 1998, longliners just off the Florida coast caught and discarded nearly 5,000 juvenile swordfish, most of which died, according to the National Marine Fisheries Service. They also caught and discarded 639 blue marlin, white marlin and sailfish.

Nothing was done

"Any fish whose mouth is big enough can get hooked," said Ken Hinman, president of the National Coalition for Marine Conservation. "King mackerel, mahi-mahi, wahoo. Forty to 50 different species get caught, everything from fish to turtles. For most of the 1990s, longliners were killing and discarding about 30,000 very young swordfish each year. That's been going on for a long time without anything being done about it."

The National Coalition for Marine Conservation and other environmental groups filed suit to force the federal government to restrict the longline fleets. The National Marine Fisheries Service agreed to ban longline fishing off the east coast of Florida, Georgia and South Carolina, as well as in parts of the Gulf of Mexico.

The Florida longline fleet consists of more than 50 boats that operate out of eastern Florida ports. When the ban went into effect, many of the fishermen were stunned. To them, the ban represents a victory for elite sportfisherman who simply want bigger tournament fish and give no thought to the ordinary people being hurt.

"People's lives are absolutely being turned upside down here," Pyle said. "They're trying to figure out what to do. People are still in shock."

In Hypoluxo, the ban has driven Geno and Karen Pratt out of business. The Pratts, who have fished together since they were children, run a small operation.

On a typical work day, they would take their boat the Just Right out at the Boynton Inlet and head about 20 miles off Fort Lauderdale or Miami Beach. Before dinner, they baited their 12-mile lines with mackerel and squid and set them out. At night, while one slept, the other would stand watch. In the morning, they would haul the lines back in. On a good day, they found 10 to 12 legal-sized swordfish -- enough to make a good living.

`All I've ever done is fish'

"We've worked all our lives," Karen Pratt said. "We have a house on the Intracoastal, and now we have to sell it. It's just overwhelming. It's just so not right. It's so not fair."

In Key Largo, Pete Boehm is looking for work to carry him through the summer, when he can't go after lobster. Before the ban, he and his two-man crew would takes his boat the Katherine Marie into the water east of the Keys and bring back loads of swordfish.

"The only thing I've ever done is fishing, but they've gotten us in so many ways," he said. "I used to longline on the bottom for snapper and grouper. They closed that. They took away the fish trapping in '92. They made the shark quota lower. It was a good living for us. And now we don't have it."

Pyle says he resents being painted as an environmental villain. He has assisted federal researchers. He hauls in his lines with care, tossing back juvenile fish and other by-catch, usually alive.

"Yes, you will hook up with some sailfish and marlins," he said. "You don't even fight them. We don't put them through the stress that the sportfishers do. They fight and fight them. They hold them up on the boat, with their livers hanging out, then say `I've released them.'"

Export markets to gain

As he sees it, the ban will simply make more fish available to sportfishermen and foreign fleets.

"You'll never get a local dolphin, shark or tuna again," said Pyle, who also runs a distribution business that sells fish in 28 states. "All my customers, people who demand high-quality product, will never get it. It will be imported from nations that pay much less attention to conservation than we do."

Many sportfishermen sympathize with the longliners. They say they are willing to sacrifice, too, if that's what it takes to restore depleted stocks of fish. But they say the damage from the longliners is clear, and that talk of foreign competition is no excuse for not acting.

"Maybe down the road, in 10 years, maybe it would be prudent to see if we could allow a few, a very few, longliners back," said John Jolley, president of the 1,400-member West Palm Beach Fishing Club, who sits on a federal advisory panel on billfish. "The American public certainly likes to get fresh seafood. But it's because the problem was so widespread in the North Atlantic that America had to lead."

There may yet be hope for the Katherine Marie, the Just Right, the Proud Mary Ellen and the other longline boats. Pyle and six other east Florida longliners have filed suit in federal court against the U.S. Department of Commerce, which includes the National Marine Fisheries Service.

They accuse the government of ignoring the ban's economic and environmental consequences. They say the ban will drive some boat owners into other fisheries, either up the east coast or into the Gulf of Mexico, where there is an even higher risk of accidentally catching blue marlin, white marlin, sea turtles and other protected species. And they say the government has offered no help to those being driven out of business, except for compiling a list of federal agencies that offer assistance to small businesses.

Federal buyout may help

Another front has opened in Congress. U.S. Rep. E. Clay Shaw Jr., R-Fort Lauderdale, will try to introduce a bill to buy out 68 longline boats, nearly one-third of the Atlantic fleet. A similar bill, which would have paid an average price of $450,000 per vessel, failed last year after being loaded with amendments. The buyout proposal has support from fishermen and environmentalists.

"We've been working all our lives, and I would love to sit back. It's physically grueling," Pratt said.

Off the east coast of Florida, marlin, swordfish and other billfish can spawn in waters from which one threat has vanished. It will probably take years to learn the impact of the ban, assuming it remains in place.

"It will help. We're talking three to five years before the products of this year's spawning really show," said Jerald Ault, assistant professor at the University of Miami's Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science.

As for the fishermen, he said, they brought on much of the trouble they're experiencing.

"They had increasingly high exploitation rates for a very long period of time," he said.