Commercial Fishing

Fisheries regulators who oversee Maryland's annual striped bass quota should delay any punishment until the conclusion of a state and federal undercover sting operation that broke up a major commercial black market, state natural resources officials said. The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission begins its winter meeting today in Alexandria, Va., and the first item on the agenda is a discussion of the status of striped bass along the Eastern Seaboard. Traditionally, commission members have been quick to punish Maryland for infractions, most recently slashing the recreational allocation to compensate for overfishing.

Marine scientists are mystified by an apparent spate of deaths among harbor porpoises, with the gregarious mammals' carcasses turning up in record numbers along East Coast beaches, including Maryland's.Through mid-April, at least 162 of the small, coast-hugging porpoises were washed ashore, dead or dying, between their wintering spots in North Carolina and their summer grounds in Maine. The number of reported deaths is more than triple last year's 51, and well above the previous record of 103 harbor porpoise deaths reported in 1977.

EAST HAMPTON, N.Y. -- Dan King's back yard is an outdoor museum for a way of life that is fast fading into oblivion.Next to the gravel driveway sits a long, narrow rowboat that King once used to haul striped bass he caught in the bays and inlets around this Long Island town. King is a bayman, the local term for a commercial fisherman, and government regulations have all but ended commercial catches of the prized fish.Behind a fence, he stores the dredges that he once dragged behind his boat to scoop up bushels of scallops.

ELANDS BAY, South Africa -- For most of his adult life, Lemmie Klaase, 35, has fished the chill Atlantic seas here as a worker for white-owned companies. These days he is fishing for himself, a man of "color."He is a member of one of this country's first fishing cooperatives, newly formed in the wake of a government initiative to end traditional white domination of the South African commercial fishing fleet.The ruling African National Congress is committed to the transformation of the fishing industry as part of its national effort to "uplift" those who are officially described as "the previously disadvantaged" -- mainly blacks and "coloreds," as people of mixed race like Klaase are known here.

GLOUCESTER POINT, Va. - It may not worry nervous LTC swimmers much, but shark populations in the Chesapeake Bay are dropping sharply, a shark researcher says.Jack Musick of the Virginia Institute of Marine Science says shark fishing has depleted the numbers of some shark species in the region by 80 percent to 90 percent."Most of our fisheries have really been mining operations," Musick said. "This is the best indication we have of the true magnitude of the crash that's occurred."That crash is measured in the number of sharks Musick catches for every 100 baited hooks he sets.

Squeaky wheels get grease. Can 500,000 sport anglers squeak loudly? You bet!THE ABOVE is from a solicitation for members by the newly formed Coastal Conservation Association (CCA) of Maryland.It may end up amounting to no more than a small and ineffectual group of disgruntled sportsmen. Or it could prove, as CCA has elsewhere, a turning point in the fragile balance between the thousands of Chesapeake watermen and the millions of the general public who share the bay's resources.CCA was founded by a few, mostly wealthy sportsmen in Texas, after unyielding commercial fishing pressure was implicated in crashes of prized species such as speckled trout and redfish (drum)

The northern Chesapeake Bay needed a voice, and Bill Windley gave it one.Mr. Windley, 48, is president of the Northern Bay chapter of the Maryland Saltwater Sportfishermen's Association, which he founded to protect the rights of the recreational fisherman and to preserve the bay. The North East resident has been a recreational fisherman for 25 years."

Along with life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, T. F. "Tedd" Biddle counts among her rights one other: the right to sell fish.For the past year she has been fighting Annapolis City Hall, collecting petition signatures, quoting passages of Maryland's 17th-century charter to the City Council, even threatening an alderman with impeachment. All this to exercise her right to sell fish from a boat at the City Dock.Now, at last, the City Council has agreed to take up her case.This month, the council gave initial approval to a bill that would amend the city code so fish could be sold from boats at the City Dock.

In proposing to limit fishing pressure on the Chesapeake blue crab, Governor Schaefer and his Department of Natural Resources may have set in motion profound changes in how the bay is harvested.One change is long overdue: a redefinition of recreational crabbing as just that -- people out to get a bushel or two to steam.But part-time crabbing for profit would be cut. In the new licensing structure, thousands of part-timers -- ranging from commercial license-holders who aren't watermen to weekenders who sell their catch -- would lose their permits.

Where small estuaries reach out like graceful fingers to meet the sea sits a quiet and peaceful place.It is called Indian River, and it's hard by the Delaware State Seashore Park.I drop in there when I am on vacation. I like meeting people there whose lifestyles are very different from mine -- it takes me away from myself and my world.Or maybe I just love the spot for its tranquillity and watery beauty -- it is far from the roaring crowds at the tourist beaches.This year I met 37-year-old Bill Cooper.

Fisheries regulators who oversee Maryland's annual striped bass quota should delay any punishment until the conclusion of a state and federal undercover sting operation that broke up a major commercial black market, state natural resources officials said. The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission begins its winter meeting today in Alexandria, Va., and the first item on the agenda is a discussion of the status of striped bass along the Eastern Seaboard. Traditionally, commission members have been quick to punish Maryland for infractions, most recently slashing the recreational allocation to compensate for overfishing.

Natural Resources Police seized nearly 3 tons of striped bass Sunday from a trawler and charged a Dorchester County seafood processor with illegal commercial fishing in Maryland waters. It was the second time in less than a week that officers had charged Jack C. Colbourne, owner of Colbourne Seafood Inc. in Secretary, with illegal fishing. Officers boarded the Mount Vernon after watching the 80-foot vessel drag a net about two miles off the Ocean City inlet all day Sunday, according to Sgt. Ken Turner, a police spokesman.

With the regulatory clock ticking toward midnight, Maryland fisheries officials are scrambling to get recreational anglers and commercial watermen to agree on new rules to cover yellow perch fishing. Department of Natural Resources officials will meet July 28 with recreational anglers to find out what they would like to see for rules covering season length, size and daily creel limit, said Tom O'Connell, fisheries service director. The agency met with commercial netters this month. Once both sides have been polled, O'Connell said his staff will develop a management plan that satisfies a bill passed by the General Assembly last year to protect yellow perch while giving recreational anglers a bigger share of the catch.

You really can't go wrong this month if you say, "I'll have the fish, please." Out on the water, stripers and blues are schooling up for their annual fall dance. On terra firma, the calendar is filling with the dates of meetings and hearings to talk about finned critters. With time running out, the Department of Natural Resources is moving quickly to draft a yellow perch management plan that would take effect Jan. 1. A group of stakeholders met Aug. 22 to review proposals that would help yellow perch migrate up rivers and streams to their historical spawning areas and provide a formula for divvying up the harvest between recreational and commercial fishermen.

The End of the Line Charles Clover The New Press / 384 pages / $26.95 As Atlantic cod were being fished nearly to extinction on the Grand Banks during the 1980s, Canadian fishery scientists convinced their government not to stop the industry. Fishermen shouldn't face strict catch limits, the biologists argued, because a smaller population of adult cod would reproduce more fruitfully than a large one. The researchers claimed that fishing had little impact on fish populations and that water temperatures and other factors were far more important.

Lately, most of the news from Washington has been dominated by partisan fights and acrimony. However, there is one issue receiving bipartisan support - the fate of America's oceans. The Senate recently approved the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act by unanimous consent. This development comes not a moment too soon. Destructive practices by the commercial fishing industry are depleting fish populations and devastating key ocean habitat. Equipped with high-tech fleets, fishing industry conglomerates have become so voracious that some fish populations have disappeared within just a few years.

The Ehrlich administration is dropping its proposal to end a 17-year moratorium on the commercial fishing of yellow perch in two Eastern Shore rivers. The Maryland Department of Natural Resources had proposed opening the Choptank and Nanticoke to commercial yellow perch fishing this spring. But after an outcry from environmentalists and recreational anglers, who said the measure would further imperil a scarce resource, department officials changed their minds. "We are withdrawing that entire package," said DNR assistant secretary Mike Slattery.

The Ehrlich administration is proposing to end a 17-year moratorium on the commercial fishing of yellow perch in two Eastern Shore rivers - a proposal that is drawing criticism from environmentalists and recreational anglers who say the species is still scarce in Maryland waterways. Department of Natural Resources officials want to open the Choptank and Nanticoke rivers to commercial yellow perch fishing beginning this spring. The Nanticoke has been closed to all yellow perch fishing since 1990; the Choptank has been open to recreational anglers since 1992.

One man died and two others were hospitalized yesterday after a commercial fishing boat collided with a tugboat and capsized in the Patapsco River, the Coast Guard said. The three men from the 29-foot fishing boat were pulled from the 40-degree water after the accident, two of them by crews of other tugboats that were nearby, the third by a crew from the Coast Guard's Curtis Bay station, said Wayne Lake, a Coast Guard civilian duty officer. The accident happened about 2 p.m. near the Key Bridge, according to Lake, who said none of the crew aboard the tug - the Richard M. Lowry, owned by Great Lakes Dredge & Dock Co. of Staten Island, N.Y. - was injured.

The men behind the curtain doing the hiring in the Ehrlich administration have been plenty busy since taking over in January. One of the guys they didn't hire was Niccolo Machiavelli. Of course he's been dead about 500 years, but nobody's perfect. ("Nick Machiavelli," joked a sports colleague. "Raiders tackle, right?) In his writings, Machiavelli, the Renaissance political philosopher, advised that it's not what you do to people, it's what people perceive you're doing to them that counts.