Hot Issues

19 Commercial tuna seiners move into Cabo for football sized tuna

19 Commercial tuna seiners move into Cabo

SPORT FISHING

THE MAGAZINE OF SALTWATER FISHING

www.sportfishingmag.com

A fleet of commercial tuna seiners working within just a couple of miles of Cabo’s beaches in late April and early May shocked and dismayed anglers and recreational-fishing interests. Capt. Mike Shrosbree (www.eurekasportfishing.com) at one point counted 19 tuna seiners working two to five miles off Cape Rock. A day later, Capt. George Landrum, in his fishing report on www.flyhooker.com, cited 13 seiners “at least eight of which were super seiners over 200 feet long with spotting helicopters, just two miles off the beach. These boats have holds that can carry 1,500 tons of fish,” Landrum says. The outcome was perhaps not surprising. A very productive bite on small yellowfin (these seiners were targeting small school-sized fish) in midApril hit the skids; after a week of intense, localized commercial netting, the sport fleet could barely buy a tuna. Landrum says officials told him most boats had permits and were fishing legally. “My fingers are crossed that the government does something to regulate the encroachment of seiners into sport-fishing areas,” he opines. “Tuna from the seiners go for $480 a ton to the packing plants. I wonder how much that same fish is worth in income from sport fishing?”

“We need to get the [Mexican] law changed so seiners will not be allowed to fish inside of 50 nautical miles,” Shrosbree says.

Some authorities theorize that overfishing has made eastern Pacific yellowfin harder to find, forcing seiners to work areas they might not ordinarily frequent, as well as to net much smaller fish. Mike McGettigan, founder of Sea Watch notes that data from the Inter-American Tropical Tuna Commission show eastern Pacific yellowfin catch having dropped from 423,000 tons in 2002 to 174,000 tons in 2006. “That’s a 60 percent drop,” McGettigan points out. “And the average weigh has also fallen during the same period from 15 kilos [about 33 pounds] to 7.8 kilos [about 17 pounds], or about 49 percent.”