Incomplete database of king mackerel

There are big holes in the database that scientists are using to assess the health of South Atlantic king mackerel.

Kelly Schoolcraft, a commercial fisherman, told that the scientists never had measure the mackerel he caught and found that scientists sampling mackerel at the fish house not on the landing spot. The fishermen of Dare County has questioned whether scientists will be able to accurately determine the status of the stock without biological information about fish caught off North Carolina by commercial fishermen.

According to Schoolcraft North Carolina is a pretty big producer of mackerel and Dare County is a big player in the fishery. In 2006, North Carolina commercial fishermen landed more than 1 million pounds of mackerel. It is informed that the stock assessments are based, in part, on information collected by port agents who measure the size of mackerel and take biological samples.

The samples collected are sent to a fisheries science laboratory where scientists calculate the age of fish by counting the growth rings in earbones, and then correlate age to length sizes. But now no data on king mackerel has been collected in Dare County. Schoolcraft said that the samples collected were sent to National Marine Fisheries Service’s (NMFS) Panama City Laboratory for age analysis. No fish taken by gill nets have been aged since 2002. John Carmichael with the South Atlantic Fishery Management Council said scientists were aware of the shortage of data from the Outer Banks gill net fishery.

Hatteras fishermen said that their catches were never measured or sampled by port agents. In February 2006, Bill Hogarth, director of NMFS at the time, promised fishermen that the federal agency would authorize two additional port agents for NC. But the Hatteras fishermen are yet to see a federal port agent at the fish house.

Source: Outer Bank Sentinel"

WorldFishingToday d. 13-05-2008