The government is well aware of the Bluefin discard and interaction while pursuing Swordfish, do not be fooled into thinking otherwise! NMFS would be more than happy to take our directed fishery for BFT and give it to the Pelagic Longline Fishery. It is only through our hard work and constant attention to details that have enabled us to,thusfar, avoid any completely devastating loss to solve there bycatch issue. I for one have no issue with pitting a fisherman against a fisherman when that same fisherman is taking from my pocket to fill his own. Longliners do us a favor, don't piss down our backs and tell us we are just sweating, we are smarter than that and will not stand for it. Although it is coming up this year if the Swordfish quota is having such difficulties being caught then why are there no Swordfish hand gear permits being given out? If the bycatch of Bluefins is not as significant as they previously insisted then real time reporting and 100% observer coverage should be no problem, I would think. In the last 5 or so years I have caught Bluefins with longline hooks in there mouths towing 100 or so feet of leader so I know that there is significant interaction since I personally catch a tiny, tiny percentage of the US quota.
As always the issue that has brought this to a head is Bluefin quota or the lack there of it. When the quota was larger there were more fish available for transfer to cover the Longline discards. Now that quota has become lean, regardless of scientific data showing robust stocks, there is little quota for transfer and the law requires all those discards to be accounted for.
The quickest but certainly not the best way to fix this problem would be to have the PLL fleet help us to increase quota levels for the BFT fishery in the U.S. but I am a firm believer that we are only kicking the can down the road. As Bluefin stocks increase we are only going to see more and more interaction with them. There has got to be another way.
