Captain Jason Colby

I can write several books on this topic but my time is very limited so I will cut right to the chase:"B2Tackle", you've got almost everything right. However, the "take", counting legal commercial, bycatch commercial (dumped dead) and black market commercial is at least 3X what "they" are counting.
Charterboats are often in a "no win" situation:the paying fares have a "legal right" to keep two fish per person and they paid for the trip so who is the captain to tell them they can't keep fish if they insist? I personally have "limited" the dead fish count as best I could but sometimes the charters "blood lust" is way out of hand to a point where I've had them argue with me that they would never come back if I threw another fish overboard!
Did it matter that they were 3,000 miles from home and staying in a hotel with no cooking facilities? Did it matter that they had already kept two fish over 40 inches (two too many)? NO! They wanted to give the fillets to the hotel staff instead of a tip. They said their group of 6 could legally keep 12 and thats what they wanted to do. I figured I would never see them again so I wouldn't kill anymore which really freaked them out. I threatened to take them back to the dock early if they got any more out of hand and that settled them down.
Those people easily had the best trip of their lives but I never heard from them again and now I ask before I leave the dock "reasonably, how many fish can you eat if each fish averages 10 pounds of fillets?" After that, I'm just holding them to their own word.

As a sidebar, I was a commercial fisherman for many years (I was a hook and line striper fisherman in Montauk until the moritorium at the end of 1985). Clammer, fish potter, longliner, dragger, etc.. I was in the seafood industry for over twenty five years as a wholesaler/processor/distributer and for several years I was general manager of one of the largest seafood distributors on the east coast. I've seen almost every attrocity you can imagine possible and I can assure you that a great deal of what is bought and sold, even today, is illegal, over quota, out of season, out of approved area, illegally harvested and/or misrepresented in some way or another.
I know several of my former co-workers (commercial bass fishermen in New York) who today are poaching illegal bass and making a year round living at it. Buyers are abundant and prices are good. Business is in cash. Enforcement is almost non-existant! From what I've seen, it seems that crime pays............JC

JayR

Jason, I applaud your efforts. Too bad there are scum poachers out there...

I am guilty of keeping more than I can eat at times. I barter my recreational caught fish with landowners who allow me to deer hunt. Well, used to as I don't hunt much anymore. You can darn well bet the fish never get wasted though....

The unaccounted for killed fish, I am certain makes the legal fishery pale in comparison. Too bad we cannot reduce the by-catch in a more effective manner. As for the poaching.... there just aren't enough CO's out there to cover such a vast ocean. This is where we should come into play. We, the users of this resource should make a stand and report infractions in every case. Too many know the can get away with it and it leaves the impression "everyone is doing it". When that happens, all bets are off....

I recently experienced such a case where someone saw poaching 1st hand and did nothing about it as he thought it was what everyone was doing.
You can darn well bet that in this day and age with cell phone cameras and video, I'll get proof of what I see and forward that proof with my complaints to the environmental police. We all should be doing that!

We need to speak up when we see infractions. Let the people in the fishery know that it is a PUBLICLY policed resource and that you can't expect anyone to look the other way. Do wrong and expect the consequences.

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