disturbing sight in the Gulf of Mexico

[archman]

From the current NOAA regulations.

In accordance with the MMPA (16 U.S.C. 1387(e)) and 50 CFR 229.6, any vessel owner or operator, or fisher (in the case of non-vessel fisheries), participating in a Category I, II, or III fishery must report to NMFS all incidental injuries and mortalities of marine mammals that occur during
commercial fishing operations. ‘‘Injury’’ is defined in 50 CFR 229.2 as a wound or other physical harm. In addition, any
animal that ingests fishing gear or any animal that is released with fishing gear entangling, trailing, or perforating any
part of the body is considered injured, regardless of the presence of any wound or other evidence of injury, and must be reported. Instructions on how to submit reports can be found in 50 CFR 229.6.

All commercial fisheries in the U.S. fall under Class I, II, or III, incidentally. Therefore they all fall under this regulation.

For a nice overview and Q&A of these rules, you can click this link. It also has contact information, both phone numbers and email. Woohoo.
http://www.nmfs.noaa.gov/prot_res/PR2/Fisheries_Interactions/MMAP.htm

 

[Nomaster]

These southern shrimp trawlers have some clout with the government. Do you all know that their lobbying, due to their in ability to compete with the price of farmed shrimp, has succeeded in slapping inport tariffs on all shrimp from China, Thailand and Brazil? That is about 65% of the imported shrimp into the USA last year. You may be able to bust that boat for killing the dolphin (if that's what they were doing) but you'll have a major uphill battle trying to stop shrimp trawling. And be prepared to pay more for shrimp this coming year. Look for our label in stores. Belize Aquaculture Ltd. No mangroves destroyed, recycled water, 0 water exchange and plastic lined ponds so no salt water seeps into groundwater supplies. (sorry. I had to throw that in just in case anyone wanted to bust me on the damage caused by shrimp farms)

If we're going to eat shrimp, and I love the little critters, we don't want to ship them in from countries that have less problem destroying other species.
If there's a way, it's better to clean up our fleet, find solutions to our problems, rather than try to put the shrimp fleet in bankruptcy or dry dock.

Tom

 

[archman]

If we're going to eat shrimp, and I love the little critters, we don't want to ship them in from countries that have less problem destroying other species.
If there's a way, it's better to clean up our fleet, find solutions to our problems, rather than try to put the shrimp fleet in bankruptcy or dry dock.

Many of our imported shrimps come from central and south american farms, which frequently are stocked with asian species. We even have a few farms in south texas. Usually the asian species are better suited for mariculture, and attain larger sizes than our domestic stocks. I've got an asian freshwater prawn in my lab right now that's got eight inches of meat on it. It's not yet at full size.

As for the dwindling shrimp fleets, that's part of a plan to maintain existing stocks and prevent overfishing. You'll see the same strategy of boat quotas in many fisheries; it's extremely common in the New England and Canadian waters. Although some of the more wacko enviro-groups may point to boat buy-outs as an end to evil practices, in fact we are keeping the industry healthier and more secure.

Unrestricted and unregulated fishing is the quick and easy path to disaster.

 

[rhine64]

I'm probably going to stir the pot but here goes. I'm still not convinced that the animal brought onto the boat by hook was a dolphin. I also am a Marine Biologist and I work with several biologists as well that have experience working around dolphins in offshore situations, both as by-catch on nets and around rig removals. Dolphins are highly capable of detecting what type of animal they are about to eat through their echolocation capabilities. If the bait had a hook in it I don't think a dolphin would take that fish or whatever it was they were using because of their ability to note the presence of a hook. My friend told me a story about some highly unscientific studies he was doing with dolphins. The dolphins would follow the boat he was working on to feed on the by catch. He would throw a crab into the water, a dolphin would race up and veer off before eating. They would do the same with mantis shrimp, but throw a snapper in and they were all over it. They are highly capable of discerning what they want and do not want to eat. I've never heard of a dolphin being hooked by accident in any situation and theiy're all over the place here (Galveston area). It's too bad you can't get the photos. I'd be interested in seeing them.

 

[Hank49]

Many of our imported shrimps come from central and south american farms, which frequently are stocked with asian species. We even have a few farms in south texas. Usually the asian species are better suited for mariculture, and attain larger sizes than our domestic stocks. I've got an asian freshwater prawn in my lab right now that's got eight inches of meat on it. It's not yet at full size.

nrestricted and unregulated fishing is the quick and easy path to disaster.

Hi Archman. Sorry to get off the dolphin issue here but I want to clear a point. Actually most all farms in South and Central America raise only litopenaeus vanammei or the Pacific white shrimp native to the pacific coast of the region, and a few stilerostrus. also a native species. Penaeus Monodon, or black tiger shrimp is the main SE Asian and Indian farmed shrimp and they do get much larger but with the viral diseases that have devastated much of the industry, most farms harvest 31-35 tail count per lb before they die. I would guess your giant fresh water prawn is macrobrachium Rosenbergii. ?? Not a good culture species. Too cannibalistic.
And now, many Asian farms are importing vanammei broodstock from this region because it is better suited for intensive, 0 water exchange systems that appear to be the farms of the future. Monodon requires higher levels of protein in their diet which does not provide a suitable carbon to nitrogen ratio to the culture water, needed for the growth of heterotrophic bacteria, the key to 0 exchange, intensive systems. 0 exchange systems are much more bio secure.
If anyone tried to bring monodon into Belize we would hog tie them and feed them to the shrimp. We're still white spot virus free and the only "monos" that are come from Madagascar or Mauritius. All of SE Asia is infected. regards, Hank

 

[rachel0]

I'm probably going to stir the pot but here goes. I'm still not convinced that the animal brought onto the boat by hook was a dolphin. I also am a Marine Biologist and I work with several biologists as well that have experience working around dolphins in offshore situations, both as by-catch on nets and around rig removals. Dolphins are highly capable of detecting what type of animal they are about to eat through their echolocation capabilities. If the bait had a hook in it I don't think a dolphin would take that fish or whatever it was they were using because of their ability to note the presence of a hook. My friend told me a story about some highly unscientific studies he was doing with dolphins. The dolphins would follow the boat he was working on to feed on the by catch. He would throw a crab into the water, a dolphin would race up and veer off before eating. They would do the same with mantis shrimp, but throw a snapper in and they were all over it. They are highly capable of discerning what they want and do not want to eat. I've never heard of a dolphin being hooked by accident in any situation and theiy're all over the place here (Galveston area). It's too bad you can't get the photos. I'd be interested in seeing them.

You're not stirring the pot. Here's a description of the animals I saw: First, the boat (the shrimp boat) had 7, maybe 8, dolphins leaping all around it. And the animal being beaten had: sleek, fairly uniformly dk gray color skin, blowhole, distinctive "bottlenose" and a dorsal fin kinda low down the body, compared to the shark that was also on the boat with the dorsal fin situated closer to the midsection and had gills (I have no idea what kind of shark it was, not being as familiar with sharks. In my limited experience, it looked to me like a reef shark, had that same coloration and body configuration).

The animal being beaten on the boat looked just like the dolphins in the water. So even if I couldn't have been able to tell it was a bottlenose dolphin just looking at him or her, comparing it to all the animals in the water all around the boat: 1) it seemed pretty clear the animal on the boat was the same as the ones in the water 2) the ones in the water were unmistakably dolphins. I don't know how this one got hooked, but she was much smaller than the other dolphins. The captain of our vessel said it was a baby dolphin, perhaps that's why she was hooked--because of her inexperience.

Also to clarify, they stopped beating the dolphin when we pulled up real close and they grabbed the shark trying to escape through the scupper. And as we continued to wait there for a response, they took the shark, dolphin, and the hook, around the other side of the boat where we couldn't see. They continued to be nonresponsive so our dive boat moved on and we went on to our first dive site.

There weren't any shrimp in any nets. The nets were empty.

 

[archman]

Hank, for some reason I believed L. vannemei and L. stylirostris to be asian endemic. But you're correct, they're eastern Pacific. So long as they're kept in farms on that side, the non-nativity issues aren't much of a problem.

Back to dolphin mortality, there are reports worldwide of mortality from fishing efforts. It's not difficult to look them up. I'll quote one Florida source that's particularly concise.

Coastal bottlenose dolphins are taken as bycatch in various kinds of fishing gear including gillnets, seines, longlines, shrimp trawls, and crab pots (Waring, et al. 2002). Bycatch of offshore bottlenose dolphins has been observed in the pelagic drift gillnet, pelagic pair trawl, New England multispecies sink gillnet, North Atlantic bottom trawl, mid-Atlantic coastal gillnet, and pelagic longline fisheries. The pelagic drift gillnet and pelagic pair trawl fisheries no longer exist. Mortalities of bottlenose dolphins due to ingestion of hooks and/or line have also been documented (see Gorzelany 1998; Well et al 1998). The gear most likely had been discarded or was consumed by the dolphin via a fish that had been hooked and broke away with the gear.

If the vessel was a menhaden purse seiner and not a shrimp trawler (they both co-occur in that area), the odds of catching a dolphin in the net go way up... to a maximum of 4 a year. Still piddly low, but it happens.

In both 1994 and 1995 one dolphin each was killed from shrimp trawl entanglement in our area. Hey I even tracked down the local gunshot wound report! 1994. My old ichthyology prof in Galveston even had an accidental hand in dolphin deaths, via a sea turtle capture study in 1993. Hmm... never told us that juicy tidbit when we where deploying gill and trammel nets in Galveston Bay.

My records sources from NMFS don't go beyond 1997, unfortunately. However, you can now look online to get the dirt on marine mammal stock assessments in U.S. waters.
http://www.nmfs.noaa.gov/prot_res/PR2/Stock_Assessment_Program/individual_sars.html

Sure dolphins are great with echolocation and intelligence, but statistically you're gonna get mortality now and again. Very young, old, and injured/diseased animals are particularly susceptible. I've personally rehabbed or buried enough of THOSE to get that point drilled home. Want to see my dead dolphin/sea turtle photo gallery? Students LOVE it!

 

[RonFrank]

Mahi-mahi is a dolphin, and it's NOT what we would think of as the dolphin (flipper) but rather the dolphin (LUNCH) that is so popular on the menu....

Ron

Yesterday, Sun 9/12 was my first saltwater dive. Went to some oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico, about 2 hours south of Galveston TX. (It was great, I'm hooked on diving).

There was one really bad thing. On the way tp our first rig, we stopped to "talk" to a shrimp boat that had many dolphins frolicking around it. Then we saw the boat hauling a dolphin in their net. Then they beat the dolphin. Is this a common occurence?

I'm thoroughly sickened and can't stop thinking about it.
What can I can do about this?

 

[archman]

Mahi-mahi is a dolphin, and it's NOT what we would think of as the dolphin (flipper) but rather the dolphin (LUNCH) that is so popular on the menu....

Now now, you've jumped in here without reading the original posts, or even the ones from earlier today. Of course we're talking about marine mammals.

Correct slang for the "fish" version is dolphin-fish. Used in the plural, you normally still use the singular (dolphin), as opposed to the marine mammals which are usually pluralized with an (s) at the end. These fine distinctions are used quite a bit, to avoid confusion with the true dolphin(s). If you go back in time, you'll find that "porpoise" was the catch-all term for the smaller cetaceans. Some of the crustier old fishermen still use it; it was in strong use through to the 1970's.

Here in the Gulf of Mexico you're not going to see a lot of people referring to Coryphaenus as "dolphin", but as the polynesian "mahi-mahi" or south american/mexican "dorado". Exceptions to this are recent Florida immigrants, who bring their regional slang down from New York or wherever.