Who Let The Dogs Out?

April 22, 2005

Release from: Karen Wall
Asbury Park Press

They are, at most, 4 feet long, with most measuring 2 to 3 feet long.

They average about 4 pounds, though they've been known to reach as much as 20 pounds.

And to most fishermen, they are 4 pounds of eating and destruction. And many fishermen say they are out of control.

Not so, say environmental groups, who say the spiny dogfish is overfished and in danger of sliding into extinction.

Which is it? Well, apparently both, when the issue is examined more closely. But even more, it may be a testament to the things that make fisheries management such a provocative issue.

The story of the spiny dogfish is a complicated one.

By most accounts, the spiny dogfish is the most abundant shark in existence.

In the late 1980s and early '90s, the number of spiny dogfish was at a historic high, according to the National Marine Fisheries Service.

As a result, NMFS began asking commercial fishermen to put their effort into targeting dogfish, thus reducing the fishing pressure on some other species, including cod, said Nils Stolpe, communications director for the Garden State Seafood Association, a commercial fishing group.

"A lot of fishermen bet the farm on it," Stolpe said, adjusting their equipment and boats to focus on the shark. And by the late 1990s, fisheries managers were in a panic, declaring the stock overfished and curtailing dogfish harvesting with strict quotas. The current regulation allows fishermen to harvest 600 pounds of dogfish per calendar day from May through October, and just 300 pounds per day from November through April.

"In essence, it has closed down the fishery," Stolpe said. "No one can afford to do it for dribs and drabs."

Yet most fishermen will tell you that a trip to fish the wrecks is sure to bring up dogfish.

"They're more of a pain now," said Willie Egerter III, captain of the Dauntless, a party boat that sails out of Point Pleasant. "We're catching more of them and more often. Some days we have to quit fishing and move just to get away from them."

"Sometimes they're so thick they're like a wall on the bottom," said James Lovgren, a commercial fisherman from Point Pleasant. "You're always working against (fishing) where they are."

In a document published Feb. 24 summarizing the findings and information relating to the spiny dogfish, prepared as NMFS and the Mid-Atlantic Fisheries Management Council were considering regulations for on the fish for this year, the stock still has not recovered enough, despite management restrictions being put in place in 2000.

"I've never seen such a huge divergence" between the scientific findings and the anecdotal evidence, said Jim Armstrong of the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council.

What gives?

Well, it's a matter of gender. While everyone agrees there are enormous numbers of male spiny dogfish around, the number of females in the population isn't enough, according to scientists with NMFS, to keep the fish from becoming extinct.

What happened was that commercial fishermen targeting dogfish were focused on the larger of the species, because the reward — the amount of meat on the fish — was greater in the bigger fish.

According to the Feb. 24 report: "From 1982 to 1995, over 95 percent of the sampled landings of spiny dogfish were females greater than 84 cm (33 inches). Males comprised a small fraction of the landings and were rarely observed above 90 cm (35 inches) in length."

Because the bigger dogfish were and are the sexually mature females, and because of the dogfish's reproductive setup — taking as much as two years to produce a litter of pups — the concern was and is that there aren't enough female dogfish around to sustain the population if the fishing for them resumes in any great way.

Some contend, however, that the NMFS scientists are looking at a skewed picture, comparing the number of dogfish now to the population heights reached in the late '80s. Lovgren contends the fisheries managers should be looking back to the '70s, when the population — the biomass — of spiny dogfish was at a less problematic level.

In the '60s, the total biomass of spiny dogfish was about 160,000 metric tons, Lovgren said. At its peak, it was about 500,000 metric tons, he said, citing NMFS figures.

But what the scientists cite is what they call the lack of recruitment — the low numbers of young dogfish being found in trawl surveys and other data.

"There's no question they can't find the young puppies," Lovgren said. But he wonders if the trawls aren't finding them simply because the dogfish are no longer in some of the areas where the trawls are conducted.

Lovgren also wonders if the lower levels of young aren't simply nature's way of controlling the population, in response to the already high numbers of males.

If not for the fact that they are voracious, destructive creatures — they will eat almost any other fish, everything from bluefish to squid, and have been known to ruin nets with their sharp teeth, at times causing holes that cost commercial fishermen their catches — probably no one would care.

"Generally, when you get a mix of dogfish with other fish, you might as well throw everything away because everything is mush," Lovgren said. "They just tear up the other fish in the net."

But trying to reduce the male population — which was suggested as one possible alternative when regulations were considered this year — without harming more females poses problems, Armstrong said.

"If a male-only fishery could be developed, there's no question in my mind" that it would meet the needs of both management goals and fishermen.

But so far, no one has come up with a workable plan that would satisfactorily protect the females, he said.

There's on other question people are raising: Because dogfish have such enormous appetites, and will consume anything they can get their mouths on, are they having a negative impact on other species — porgies, menhaden, black sea bass, summer flounder, striped bass — that fisheries managers are trying to protect as well?

"That's the million-dollar question," Armstrong said.

Lovgren and Egerter believe the dogfish unquestionably are impacting other species.

"They're trying to protect scup, sea bass and fluke, and those fish are getting targeted by the dogfish, particularly the smaller ones we have to discard," Egerter said. "It's like a race to the bottom for the ones we throw back, can they get there before the dogfish get to them?

"Whatever food source is around in abundance they're going to eat," Egerter said.

"If we want that (more dogfish), what are we willing to sacrifice," Lovgren asked, noting that whiting — which inhabit depths similar to the dogfish — are few and far between in New Jersey waters. He cited yellowtail flounder, which have nearly disappeared, while the population of little skates — which feed on the yellowtail's larvae — has tripled.

"They all have their place but we need the proper amount," Lovgren said.

Armstrong agreed, and said fisheries managers are taking steps in that direct, albeit very small, slow ones.

"We're not going to just manage a stock in a vacuum," he said. "You've got to consider its impact on other parts of the ecosystem."

But he said ecosystem fisheries management is still years away, simply because of the amount of bureaucracy involved.

"You almost have to have a dire emergency" to get anything done quickly, Armstrong said. The laws governing fisheries management — the Magnusen-Stevens Act and the National Environmental Protection Act — add so much time and paperwork to the process that it's difficult to overcome.

"Dogfish now get the same protections as codfish, despite the fact that they'll never be as important as cod, or bluefish, or striped bass," Stolpe said. "From any practical perspective, it's totally wacked."