POINT JUDITH, R.I. — April 27, 2014 — State environmental regulations limit fishing trips by the pound, but it's impossible to tell how much fish is in a net that's underwater.
April 9 was a good day for Tony Borges, captain of the Sao Paulo. He only had to throw 100 pounds of fish overboard.
That's 100 pounds of fluke, roughly 33 individual fish, most of which were already dead.
It's an unavoidable fact of the fluke fishery that every time you go out to fish, you have to throw some back. It comes with the territory.
State environmental regulations limit fishing trips by the pound, but it's impossible to tell how much fish is in a net that's underwater.
You can estimate based on what you caught the last time, Borges said, but the only way to know for sure is to bring the net up, suffocating or crushing the fish in the process.
Borges and New Bedford's other fluke fishermen say there is a better way. They say if states could cooperate, fewer fish would be unnecessarily discarded.
Read the full story at the New Bedford Standard-Times