WOW, it looks as if the Department of Environmental Protection's plan for new restrictions on recreational anglers is stirring up a bit of controversy. Nice to see that there is still some life in those who pursue the sport of fishing.

This probably warrants a bit of a closer look. Bag limits are already in place in Bermuda (and have been for some time) for red hind, white-water snapper and other grouper species. There doesn't seem to have been too much issue with these. Oh, probably a few laws have been broken but there hasn't been any wholesale carnage, with most true recreational fishers willing to abide by the rules. From a pragmatic point, ten red hinds will more than fill my freezer and I probably plan on going fishing again in a week or so and I know that I can catch some more fresh fish. There is no real advantage to catching 20 and then stashing them away. Even adhering to the rules will allow the regular recreational angler to build up a stock of hind that will last months.

To the species involved. Let's start with the bluefin tuna, albacore and big-eye tuna.

Okay, so there is a planned restriction on bluefin tuna. Big deal! Bluefin are so uncommonly caught here that any time one is brought to the dock it becomes a news item. At ICCAT and other conservation venues, bluefin get a lot of attention. They were heavily over fished and even now the Atlantic population is at a fraction of what it once was. There are plenty of international and national restrictions on the taking of bluefins. These range from minimum size limits to restrictions on numbers and even the need of specialised permits to allow a fisherman to retain any bluefin that he might be lucky enough to catch.

The main reason for the control of the bluefin fishery is that these fish are so valuable. They can fetch hundreds of dollars a pound in the Japanese fish markets. To give some idea of their value there is an old adage, apparently coined by a Japanese captain that goes "One tuna equals one Toyota".

In terms of the Bermuda recreational fishery, there might be a bluefin caught every five years. They are not common enough to become the target of directed effort and they are a serious fish meant for the heaviest tackle. The number caught by any kind of local fisherman, commercial or recreational in the last ten years can be counted on one hand. Truly this is not an issue.

Big-eye tuna. Again, they occur here but not in any numbers. A few are probably caught and written off as yellowfins by anglers who don't recognise the subtler differences. Let's be generous and say 10-20 fish per year ¿ again, not a problem.

Albacore, on the other hand, are particularly numerous in this region and were the mainstay of the Taiwanese longline fishery. The thing is that they tend to run at depth during the winter months and therefore are seldom encountered by surface fishermen. Most local effort, both commercial and recreational is directed at a surface fishery, so albacore are at best an incidental catch. Until, the local fleet starts going out of its way to catch albacore, it will remain an incidental catch, making regulatory efforts redundant and unnecessary.

One of the questions that really needs to be answered has less to do with the bag limits than it has to do with who can catch fish. As mentioned previously, a fishing licence in Bermuda is a licence to sell fish. There is virtually no control on who can catch fish.

By way of comparison, look at the state of Florida. Given the importance of sport fishing, recreational fishing, boating and water-based tourism, proper regulation is vital. Commercial fishermen are regulated as are charter boat operators but things do not come to an end there. A fishing licence is required whether the fishing is conducted in freshwater (bass, etc.) or in saltwater. Simply put, you have to have a licence before you even think about wetting a line. To make things less onerous, there are provisions for cheap licences for youths and retired people, both of whom still must be in possession of a valid licence. There are then a number of regulations that govern the fishing and these include bag limits and size limitations for certain species.

In Florida things are taken a bit further as there are provisions for the keeping of certain species that are in demand. Tarpon, for instance, are almost always returned to the sea alive. In the rarer event that someone wants to kill the fish, say, for a mount (not strictly necessary but maybe for a record), a special permit or tag is issued on payment of a fee. This allows the holder to use the tag to keep one tarpon. It is possible to go back and purchase additional tags, depending on whether there are any left in the pool. The number of tags that may be allotted depends on the state of the stock and management measures that are in place at any given time. Here again, the emphasis is on recreational fishing being primarily just that, recreational as in for fun, not to fill the boat.

Yellowfin tuna and blackfin tuna are the two main tuna species of concern. Many will remember years ago when large numbers of tuna were dumped after tournaments. Boats would catch a dozen or more tuna on various line classes and bring the fish to a weigh-in. The main problem was that nobody carried sufficient ice to preserve the fish and when the fish arrived at the weighstation many of them sported suntans. They were either dumped or returned to the sea as chum next day. Not really the judicious use of a valuable resource. Happily, many learned their lessons and most club tournaments now have a catch and release system of scoring.

There are critics who say that catch and release is not a viable means of conducting a tournament. This is open to cheating. Well, in the absence of observers, this is a possibility. The real cynics will say even the observers can be bought but for most local tournaments, this isn't really an issue. Most local tournaments may have nice prizes but not tens of thousands o f dollars worth. Cheating on a grand level needs a hefty incentive.

The money-prize billfish tournaments which are the only Bermuda tournaments that aspire to the big time utilise observer programs quite successfully. Going beyond the tournaments, most locals and the charter boat operators pride themselves on catching and releasing billfish with very few being brought to the dock during the course of a year.

This is an interesting observation inasmuch as most saltwater bag limits were originally directed toward billfish. To a great extent, this potential problem sorted itself out with the billfish anglers voluntarily adopting catch and release procedures. Virtually every major tournament is now a modified catch and release with only events like the Blue Marlin World Cup insisting that a qualifying fish is weighed in. Even then, it isn't too much of a problem. The World Cup sees something like 200 boats fishing all over the Atlantic and Pacific and only two or three fish are ever weighed in. In fact, there are provisions for years in which no fish might be weighed in. This is a far cry from the day when a marlin tournament might see several dozen fish hanging from gallows, all of which are slated for dumping.

The debate is likely to continue and there are a lot of additional aspects that need to be considered. This will be the purview of the bar-room lawyers and the sea-lawyers who always have something to say, regardless of it making sense or not. For the most of us, a speedy and judicious resolution is in everyone's best interest. For the real recreational fishermen the pleasure is derived less from the catching than from the sport value afforded by Tight lines!!!