December 14, 2018 — Flipping through his captain’s log, Larry Colangelo looks at the water temperatures off Atlantic City’s coast this past summer. Unusually warm 70- and 80-degree days are jotted down inside the record-keeping book he’s had for nearly two decades.
For $800 a day, he takes tourists and professional anglers alike onto his 31-foot ship. But in recent years, he said, certain fish have become more challenging to catch and keep.
Climate change and outdated regulations are partially to blame, researchers say, and it’s affecting some local fishermen in drastic ways.
“I only know what I see, and what I see is that the water definitely seems to be warmer… We have to work a little harder now,” said Colangelo, who owns a charter boat docked at Kammerman’s Marina in Atlantic City.
A November report in the ICES Journal of Marine Science looked at how fishermen are reacting to the migration of fish north as the ocean’s temperature gradually increases. It reports dramatic shifts in the distances large, commercial Atlantic Coast fishing operations have been traveling over the past 20 years.
But for some commercial fishers in South Jersey, it’s been business as usual.
Dotted with outdoor seafood restaurants, Cape May’s commercial fishing industry brought in $85 million in 2016. The city boasts one of the largest local fishing markets in the country.
Jeff Reichle, president of Lunds Fisheries in Cape May, said his 19-boat fleet has been buying permits off North Carolina and Virginia for decades.
In recent years, he said he’s noticed more summer flounder and sea bass near Connecticut and Massachusetts, but said his boats continue to travel along the entire coast both to maximize the number of fish caught and due to higher quotas in Virginia and North Carolina.
“You follow the fish where they go,” Reichle said. “This is why boats float and have propellers.”
Read the full story at the Press of Atlantic City