Marlin Article

This article in yesterday's LA Times Outpost blog provides a good discussion of some the potential impacts of sport fishing on marlin as they stack up off the west coast of Baja Sur in the fall.

Fishing for marlin and other species can be excellent from Bahia Magdelena South in the fall but anglers should use restraint. Flyfishing with a properly sized rod should minimize the frequency of gut hooked fish and allow for a quick fight and release. Keep the fish in the water - avoid the temptation to drag it over the rail for photos. In my experience fish get gut hooked mostly when bait fishing and allowing the fish to swallow the bait.


Anglers' high marlin catch in Cabo San Lucas raises concerns
1:34 PM, December 31, 2008
Pete Thomas

Outposts has been touching on the phenomenal marlin bite at the Golden Gate Bank north of Cabo San Lucas on the Pacific side of the Baja California peninsula.

Just how good has the bite been?

Tracy Ehrenberg of Pisces Sportfishing boasts of the capture of more than 7,000 striped marlin this season, and of a 98.6% release rate. This is just from her fleet, so the overall tally must be incredible.

"After talking to captains with more than two decades' experience, they agreed that they have never seen fishing so good so long in one location," Ehrenberg reports.

Perhaps. But there's a troubling trend off Land's End. Crews aboard the top boats have been aggressively trying to out-perform one another, catching and releasing marlin as fast as they can, striving to make theirs the high boat for a given day.

Captains too. The more marlin flags they fly, the bigger their reputations become.
One-day, single-vessel counts have been as high as 30. When the marlin are bunched up that tightly they simply become too vulnerable.

Undoubtedly, many stripers die after being released. Certainly, most of those that are gut-hooked perish. If you've caught lots of marlin, you've seen at least a few disgorge their entire stomachs during the battle.

Out of curiosity, I asked Michael Domeier, president of the Marine Conservation Science Institute, to comment on this phenomenon. The researcher e-mailed back this morning:

"Most anglers believe that the stomach throwing is a natural event and that the
everted stomach is retracted/swallowed after release. It's possible that billfish have evolved a mechanism for disgorging prey items that they wish they hadn't eaten, or get rid of bones from large prey (bones may be hard to digest)."

"After about a decade of studying billfish with satellite tags, I can say that a disproportionate number of marlin that have thrown their stomachs die after release. I can't say exactly why these fish die, but I have a hypothesis: Fish that are captured with a thrown stomach have been gut hooked and gut hooked fish often die."

"I think the hook actually pulls the stomach out; when the hook/stomach reach the mouth the hook can lodge in the mouth. I have a picture of a black marlin that I took in Australia, the fish is jumping, the stomach is out and the hook can be seen in the corner of the mouth. When you zoom in on the head you can clearly see a tear in the stomach. I tagged the fish and it died."

Thankfully, marlin are now dispersing from the Golden Gate. But they'll be back next winter. Hopefully, the same serious marlin fishermen (and captains) who became powerful advocates of catch-and-release will give up the numbers game and exercise reasonable restraint.

Consider this a New Year's wish.

Turtle Mortality in Magdelena Bay

While it may seem strange to some that I post sea turtle conservation links on a fly fishing board, I think that there are important links between inshore fisheries and turtles in Baja California Sur. The same nets and long lines that kill turtles have severe impacts on the fisheries in mangrove lagoons and near shore waters. And besides sea turtles are cool, beautiful, interesting organisms and seeing them is always a highlight to any fishing trip and parth of the Baja experience.

Hoyt and company are doing great work and finding positive solutions that will help protect turtles and fisheries for the future.

Link to story

Study finds high mortality of endangered loggerhead sea turtles in Baja California

Along the southern coast of Baja California, Mexico, scientists have been counting the carcasses of endangered sea turtles for a decade as part of an effort to assess and eliminate threats to loggerhead sea turtle populations. Their findings, published this week, are shocking: almost 3,000 sea turtles were found dead along a 27-mile stretch of coast during a five-year period from 2003 to 2007.

Led by Hoyt Peckham, a graduate student at the University of California, Santa Cruz, the study underscores the enormous impact of bycatch (marine life accidentally killed by fishing operations) on sea turtles. Bycatch and, to a lesser degree, poaching are both significant threats to the survival of the endangered Pacific loggerhead sea turtle population, Peckham said.

"We saw what are apparently the highest documented stranding and fisheries bycatch rates in the world," he said. "But the high bycatch rates offer us all an unexpected conservation opportunity. By working with just a handful of fishermen to diminish their bycatch, we can save hundreds of turtles."

Peckham and his coauthors, whose findings appear in a special bycatch issue of Endangered Species Research, are working to increase awareness of the problems facing sea turtles in Baja California Sur. They hope this report will encourage Mexico's government agencies to finalize creation of a refuge that protects turtles and encourages sustainable fishing in the area.

"We have counted so many dead turtles. We have piles of data on thousands of carcasses. What we need now are conservation actions and viable solutions," said Wallace J. Nichols, research associate with the California Academy of Sciences and a coauthor of the paper.

The authors partnered with local fishermen not only to assess bycatch but also to increase awareness of its far-reaching effects and work toward ending the threat.

"Once they are aware of the ocean-wide impacts of their local bycatch, fishermen often strive to fish more cleanly by switching to different techniques, target species, or areas," Peckham said. "As a result, stranding rates were down in 2008."

In addition, local fishermen are working with the Mexican government to designate a sea turtle refuge that would officially protect an area the researchers identified as a "hotspot" of turtle bycatch.

Conservation tourism offers another potential solution to these problems by giving fishermen an alternative to dwindling, inefficient fisheries, Peckham said. Through training and a steady tourism market, many fishermen and former poachers have come to value sea turtles more highly alive than dead, because conducting tours can yield more income than fishing, he added. One organization that has promoted ecotourism in this area is the Ocean Conservancy through its SEE Turtles program. The program links travelers with critical sea turtle conservation sites so that vacation dollars can both protect the sea turtles and enhance the livelihood of community residents who protect them.

North Pacific loggerhead sea turtles travel more than 7,000 miles from Japan to Baja California Sur to feed and grow in nearshore waters, spending up to 30 years there before returning to Japan to breed. The number of nesting females in Japan has declined by 50 to 80 percent over the past 10 years, Peckham said.

In addition to Peckham and Nichols, the authors of the new study include Tim Tinker, adjunct professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at UCSC; David Maldonado Diaz and Alexander Gaos of Grupo Tortuguero, a nonprofit conservation group based in La Paz; and Volker Koch and Agnese Mancini of the Autonomous University of Baja California Sur.

FONMAR

The following was copied from a thread on the Baja Nomads Forum posted by Don Alley - it is an email update from The Billfish Foundation:

"What Your Fishing License Fees Can Do

Illegal Fishing Bust in Mag BayCommunity based enforcement efforts supported by The Billfish Foundation (TBF) through the Baja California Sur Center for Marine Protection and funded by the recreational fishing license fees paid to FONMAR have resulted in three recent seizures of illegally harvested dorado. TBF was instrumental in getting FONMAR established so that angler's license fees would go directly to assisting conservation and protection of the fish resources.

Three weeks ago, a vessel was seized in Loreto and, this past weekend, two boats owned by commercial longline king Henry Collard were seized and charged with illegally harvesting dorado while using a shark permit in Magdelena Bay. Collard, a prominent representative of commercial fishing interests, was reported in El Sudcaliforniano to have threatened fisheries enforcement agents that he "is a personal friend of Ramon Corral and you can't do this to me!" This statement does not do much for Corral's already tainted image by accusations of wrong doing by his own Conapesca personnel.

Corral is the head of Mexico's fisheries agency CONAPESCA and has been an unyielding supporter of the shark Nom-029 that attempted to allow the "incidental" harvest of billfish, dorado and other species within Mexico's 24 year old conservation
zones.

Apparently the recent interest of U.S. enforcement officials in the import of illegally caught dorado has persuaded CONAPESCA that they need to concede TBF's position that there is no basis in Mexican law to allow bycatch in the conservation zones and enforce the federal fisheries law," said TBF President Ellen Peel. Full details of the story will follow in the upcoming issue of Billfish magazine."

Lopez Mateos Sea Turtle Festival

The annual Sea Turtle Festival in Puerto Lopez Mateos starts Friday, August 15th. Hosted by ProCaguama the Sea Turtle Festival features many traditional and non-traditional fiesta activities and is always a good time. The queen is selected based on the success of her clean up campaign - the winner typically collects over a ton of trash from local beaches! The festival mixes music, food, and fun while spreading a conservation message to thousands. This is an event worth supporting.

In many cases efforts to protect turtles will also result in improved fisheries. In the Magedelena Bay region and other parts of Baja California, Conservation Tourism is a growing industry with gray whales in the bay from January to March and great opportunties to observe loggerhead and other species of turtles.

For information on turtle trips check out See Turtles.

VI Festival de la Caguama en Puerto Adolfo López Mateos

El Sudcaliforniano
12 de agosto de 2008
Arturo R. Corona

Ciudad Constitución, Baja California Sur.- Será el próximo viernes 15 de agosto cuando inicie el VI Festival Internacional de la Caguama en Puerto Adolfo López Mateos. Lo anterior lo dieron a conocer integrantes del grupo ecologista de Conservación Pro Caguama de origen extranjero que opera en esa región del pacífico.

Cabe mencionar que desde el año del 2003 el Grupo de Conservación de Procaguama, junto con las autoridades de la Delegación Municipal de Puerto Adolfo López Mateos, comenzaron a celebrar la existencia de este lugar único en el planeta donde se concentra la tortuga amarilla, antes de iniciar su migración a las aguas de Japón, donde anida.

Esta especie de tortuga marina se encuentra altamente amenazada de extinción, por lo que la comunidad de López Mateos, junto con otras comunidades de la costa de la península de Baja California trabajan coordinando esfuerzos desde el 2003 para revertir esta situación.

Por su rol ecológico y su valor cultural, la tortuga amarilla constituye un tesoro que debemos conservar. El viernes 15 de agosto se iniciará el festival con un desfile o gallo, donde se presentarán la reina de la Caguama Gisselle I y la princesa Cristel. Además, las Borargas de tortugas amarilla, golfina y laud también estarán presentes.

El desfile terminará en el muelle del Carapacho, donde se presentará un grupo de música local y se realizará un baile de inauguración. Las actividades deportivas comenzarán temprano en la mañana del sábado 16 y el templete abrirá a las 7 de la tarde con la banda Los Intensos de Sinaloa, en el Muelle del Faro.

Habrá diversos números artísticos, entregas de premios y reconocimientos y el cierre estará a cargo de "Los Grandes del Pardito". El delegado de López Mateos, Diego Ivan De La Toba, participará en el evento y también se espera la llegada del presidente municipal y del gobernador para el cierre del evento.

Mangroves and Bahia Magdelena Conservation

Here is a link to an article that provides a good summary of the scientific paper that I linked to in my July 22 post about Mangroves.

Making that Deep Sea Connection to Mangroves

The article provides a good link to a story about the Magdalena Baykeeper group.

Magdalena Bay stretches for roughly 130 miles along the Pacific Coast between Loreto and La Paz and its mangrove lined channels are the biggest fish nursery on the Pacific Coast. This area is critically important for many species of sport fish, sea turtles, and is one of the three main gray whale calving lagoons.