September 13, 2012 — This almost slipped under the radar but the nuisance spiny dogfish was just recently given the Marine Stewardship Council’s stamp of approval as a sustainable and well-managed fishery.
This applies to the United States East Coast North Atlantic fishery, that operates year round in federal and state waters off the U.S. East Coast from Maine to North Carolina and uses three gear types: gillnet, longline, and otter trawl.
Kerry Coughlin, the MSC regional director said the certification means buyers and consumers worldwide will “now have assurance that the U.S. Atlantic spiny dogfish fishery is well-managed and sustainable,” and that the target stock is healthy and commercial fishers are harvesting the stock appropriately.
This doesn’t come as a surprise to our recreational boat captains who have been saying for years there was an overabundance of them here in our waters.
“I never saw a let up of them. We catch so many of them when we are mackerel, ling or sea bass fishing,” said Capt. Willy Egerter of the Dauntless out of Point Beach. “Most people just quit fishing if they’re catching too many dogfish.”
That definitely wasn’t the case worldwide though, as the stocks of what was the most abundant shark species in the water, declined to a point where Greenpeace International had them red listed, meaning they were at a high risk of being sourced from an unsustainable fishery.
The stocks had reportedly plummeted by 95 percent in the Northeast Atlantic.
Over here in the Western Atlantic, the National Marine Fisheries Service developed and implemented rebuilding plans beginning in 2000 to allow the stock to recover to a sustainable level. NMFS now categorizes the fishery as rebuilt; it is not overfished and overfishing is not occurring.
Now the trick is to establish a strong market for spiny dogfish in Europe where the countries like England, Germany and France have a developed taste for them. In England it is often disguised in fish and chips as “rock salmon.”
“They’ll probably need to catch 5 to 10,000 pounds a day to keep the market strong,” Egerter said.
Egerter believes a strong commercial market for spiny dogfish could help with the sustainability of popular recreational species such as sea bass, which many captains argue get eaten up by the large packs of spiny dogfish.
Read the full story in the Asbury Park Press