SWORDS!... life on the line...

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nubz

Feeder Fish
MFK Member
Apr 11, 2009
610
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port aransas texas
any MFKer who cares about fish should read this! i saw the ads for this show while watching shark week. i thaught it was just another Deadleist Catch wannabe show... but for the heck of it i watched it last night. its about long lining for large swordfish! for those of you that dont know longlining is a form of fishing where a central line that stretches 1000 yards and has thousands of baited hooks dangling from it is put out from a boat for about three days and pulled in with an electronic wench. out of a thousand hooks they say a good catch is 30 legal fish. what they talk about was all the juvenile fish, sea turtles and sea birds killed and are thrown back. Me and my dad watched in horror as a 60lb sword fish was brought onto the deck that had evidently been dead for a while because it was as stiff as a plank. the deck hand un hooked the dead fish and threw it back then pretended it would be fine as it floated away lifelessly. :irked: then they brought up about a 500lb bluefin tuna i was nearly crying as they bludgeoned the great giant to death! :cry:so i did soe googleing to get some sad facts for you guys


#1 the estimated stock of spawning bluefin tunas has reduced to 12% of what it was in 1970

#2 two out of every three swordfish are caught before they get a chance to spawn! males begin to spawn at three years of age or at 70lbs and females at 5 years or 115lbs

#3 of the female swordfish caught comercially 83%!!!! are immature!

#4 U.S longliners usually " discard " between 40-50% of the swords they catch because the are to small to sell. and due to trauma recieved from being caught ( jaws , gills , fins , torn apart) virtually all of these fish (between ages 1 and 2 ) are either already dead or die shortly after!

#5 in 1988 the U.S. fleet " discarded" 433 TONS of such fish.

these are a FEW of the facts i could get i can and will post more but olny after every 5 posts i get showing that )Y(fk cares! so post up!
 
bump! this is important!
 
yes said but I hear marlin and sailfish are some of the best fish to eat out of the ocean. Tuna taste like crap we just recently brought home some of a 135 pound bluefin from delaware and it didnt taste that great wish they crew on the boat wouldnt have gaffed it so it could have been released.
 
MultispeciesTamer;3361822; said:
yes said but I hear marlin and sailfish are some of the best fish to eat out of the ocean. Tuna taste like crap we just recently brought home some of a 135 pound bluefin from delaware and it didnt taste that great wish they crew on the boat wouldnt have gaffed it so it could have been released.


the show isnt about targeting marlin or sailfish tho.. its about targeting swordfish. which in my opinion isnt a very good fish to eat. i have never had marlin or sailfish before tho.

also i disagree totally with the longlining idea.. i think that it should be regulated like grouper fishing is. you have to man a pole and pull that fish up to catch it. would save fish and also give more jobs to fisherman who need to be on that boat to hold the fishing poles and catch the fish.
 
Longline fishing is a horribly inhumane practice with massive amounts of dead fish cast-off. The fish get hooked, then suffocate or get cut in half by sharks before the fisherman even get there. On the other hand, Japanese longliners are the CNN of the world's oceans & have contributed greatly to our current knowledge of the open ocean. Heck, they told the world about the spawning grounds off Angola (Marlin guys know what I'm talkin about).
 
MultispeciesTamer;3361822; said:
yes said but I hear marlin and sailfish are some of the best fish to eat out of the ocean. Tuna taste like crap we just recently brought home some of a 135 pound bluefin from delaware and it didnt taste that great wish they crew on the boat wouldnt have gaffed it so it could have been released.

very very few people keep sailfish and marlin to eat they are a highly prized game fish but rarely eatin!.. That show was makin me mad with the long lines and that mako they gaffed .
 
keaser06;3361935; said:
the show isnt about targeting marlin or sailfish tho.. its about targeting swordfish. which in my opinion isnt a very good fish to eat. i have never had marlin or sailfish before tho.

also i disagree totally with the longlining idea.. i think that it should be regulated like grouper fishing is. you have to man a pole and pull that fish up to catch it. would save fish and also give more jobs to fisherman who need to be on that boat to hold the fishing poles and catch the fish.
Iam sure they catch and target all species of billfish, sword fish and Scombridae
 
sail fish is ok to eat ( or so ive heard ) but marlin isnt both should ALWAYS be released when recreational fishing. we only keep very large ones during tourniments
( my dad wwon $500,000 for a 575lb blue marlin... but thats not inhumane cuz we donated the meat to the poor and we only keep one about every five years. we sustain to protect!
 
heres another fact.... more than 90% of the large pelagic predetory bony fish that once roamed the open ocean are GONE!
 
BUMP!!! BTW 300th post!!!!
 
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