May 21, 2012 – CHATHAM — If the English navigator Bartholomew Gosnold ventured into Cape waters in 2012 instead of 1602, he might have come up with a different name for our peninsula. Something like Cape Skate or Cape Dog. Nowadays, it's not cod that sustains many local fishermen but the small sharks known as dogfish, or winter skates, large winged creatures listed in the same family as sharks that glide along the bottom in shallow waters eating worms, amphipods and fish.
That's a good thing, because cod fishery has not responded well to nearly 20 years of tough fishing regulations. Its recovery from historic low population levels in the 1990s seems to have stalled or is drifting in the wrong direction, with fishery regulators looking at even tougher measures to get it back on course.
Dogfish and skates, once discarded as trash fish, have become valuable. They are also experiencing a population boom, and this spring federal fish regulators decided to allow much larger catches of both stocks. The spiny dogfish was declared rebuilt to healthy levels in 2010, a decade after it was found to be overfished and placed on a fishery management plan. This year quota jumped by nearly 6 million pounds from 30 million to 35.6 million pounds. After its data showed significant improvement in the skate population, the National Marine Fisheries Service increased the annual skate quota last year from 31 million to 48 million pounds.
"It almost seems out of balance, there are that many," Chatham fisherman Leo Maher said. When he goes out fishing for haddock or cod, setting out long lines with thousands of baited hooks, the dogfish seem to be everywhere, and gobble up whatever is on the line.
"We have to stay away from dogs. We set gear for haddock and when we pull up the lines all we come up with is heads. It didn't use to be like that," Maher said.
Read the full story at the New Bedford Standard Times.