Morning seems early, the light dull and gray at 5 o’clock. We board the boat, a 38′ recreational fishing charter boat out of South Portland, and as soon as coffee is in the cups we are off, growling slowly out the misty channel into the harbor, with the dense commercial activity sitting quiet at this hour on the Portland side and a forest of recreational boats on the other. Today’s goal is simple, to catch and tag as many codfish as we can, using that most ancient of fishing methods, a simple hook and line.
As we speed up past a massive oil tanker sitting light in the water at the fuel depot I organize my gear – a couple of carpet-style tagging guns, data sheets, clips of two-inch long plastic tags in numerical order, and a folding yard-long measuring board, all the while talking loudly over the throb of the diesel. As we run I explain the project, called the Northeast Regional Cod Tagging Project, to the captain and mate.
Our group today consists of myself – marine projects researcher for the Island Institute in Rockland – Dr. Shelly Tallack of the Gulf of Maine Research Institute who is the program coordinator; a volunteer fisherman from the Maine Department of Marine Resources; and the mate and captain. This trip is but one of hundreds of trips going on this year and last, involving small recreational hook boats, large commercial draggers, longline fishermen, large government research vessels, lobstermen and others, all working together to place small tracking tags in the backs of over 100,000 codfish.
We cruise out a couple of miles into the gray mist, a greasy leftover swell knocking the boat around a little as we power up to 22 knots. Not more than five miles out we come to the Portland Harbor entrance buoys, flanked on either side by the East and West Cod Ledges. These ledges are named for the codfishing that used to go on here, being on a good day within rowing distance of the shore for dories and other small boats. Part of my mandate in this collaborative project is to tag fish in near-shore areas that used to be significant contributors to the fishery, so I ask the captain to find a spot around here to give it a try. I have not yet fished here this year, so am apprehensive, but I would like to try to put some tags out here so that the project includes as wide a range as possible, specifically including areas that could harbor smaller, separate, sub-groups of fish.
I grab my rod, bait up, and throw the bail on the reel. The bait skids down out of sight, leaving a bit of a dirty gray streak in the water from the gurry of the cut clam stomachs. We are starting the day in about 180 feet of water, not overly deep for codfish. I move the bait around a bit, and wait with early morning anticipation. Nothing. Two other lines are down, and they too are five minutes without a bite. Just as I am losing interest I feel a small tug. I tighten up the line a bit and wait, and there it is again. I pick up the tip, and there is indeed a fish, albeit a small one, down on the end. I hand the rod off to another in order to ready the gear, and then wait by the side in order to receive the anticipated codfish. I see it come out of the gloom some 25 feet down, and with a little bit of a sinking heart recognize the twisting, eel-like body of a cusk. Not what we are after, and a bad sign. I free the small unlucky cusk, breath a disappointed sigh, and glance at my watch as our morning slips away. “OK, nothing here, just as I thought,” says the captain, “let’s keep going.” I think to myself “Not exactly the Cod Ledges anymore,” as we power back up for a run offshore.
These areas used to provide the geographic diversity that allowed a near-shore groundfish fishery (for cod, haddock, hake, and related species) to exist and flourish in nearly every port along the Maine coast. These areas have not, however, seen a good run of groundfish in many years. I think of pictures I have seen of racks and racks of codfish drying on the Casco Bay islands, fish taken in large part from these very grounds, and wonder how this decline could have come to pass. Certainly it is due in large part to the general decline of the population over the whole range, a decline quantified by some at over 95 percent of the original historical population. As these schooling fish decline, they tend to concentrate, thus leaving some areas barren. Some observers also point out that this tendency allows fishermen to continue targeting fishable aggregations until almost the last fish is gone. “Hey, I am still catching a good amount of fish, and should be allowed to keep fishing,” a fisherman might say. While this is a true observation, it is also a worrying one, as this may represent be a very reduced population. Another variable to be considered is how the fish move, as fishermen in one area may be working on the same population that moves to another area later in the year. It is this very characteristic that the tagging study seeks to investigate. There are also concerns that the fishing gear used may have damaged the bottom, and that these areas consequently might not be able to support the population they used to. Many fishermen disagree with this, and I really don’t know what to believe, a situation shared by many of the experts in the field. Fisheries science can be tough this way, trying to address obvious questions such as “are there enough fish to survive?” but still finding the answers murky despite the clear question. The sea still does have plenty of mysteries, as it always has. Today I put all this out of my mind, and like any fisherman of any age, just want to catch some fish.
We run another half hour offshore, and slow down to look around on the sounder for schools of baitfish. We are able to locate the boat right on a marked fishing spot on the GPS driven computer plotter, and furthermore confirm the bottom contour with the sounder. We are right over a hump on the bottom, rising up a few fathoms above the surrounding terrain. Locating the boat so exactly is something I take for granted, and do every day, but this technology too has probably contributed to the decline of the species, as there are fewer and fewer places to hide. We spot a cloud of bait near the bottom, and drop the lines again. Dragged down by 20 ounces of lead, the two circle hooks soon hit bottom. These Japanese style hooks tend to hook the fish in the edge of the mouth rather than in the throat, hopefully resulting in a minimum of damage to fish we aim to release. This time the bait is on the hard for four or five minutes when I am awakened by a good tug. Aha, codfish this time, I hope! I set the hook, and it’s “fish on,” a gratifying feeling after the hour-and-a-half trip out. The codfish is not a noted fighter in the pantheon of gamefish, and tends to be more of a weight on the end rather than taking out line in any reel-screaming, tuna-like runs. As we are seeking to release all the fish with a minimum of trauma, I bring the fish up slowly, as this results in less “blown” fish, or fish with parts of their swim bladder or organs forced out either their mouth or their anus, thus making them poor specimens for tagging. I am excited as always to see what is on the other end. Despite four years of commercial fishing and six years of research, I am always interested in the next thing to come up out of the water. Sure enough, it’s a codfish. This 17-inch fish is too short to be kept by recreational or commercial fishermen, but it is good for the study. I take him as gently as possible from the water (“I bet this is the first time this has happened to you” I say to the fish). The sea green codfish curls up on the tagging board, gives two flips of his spatulate tail, then obligingly lies right out as if measuring himself. I shoot a thin plastic tag in his back, record the length and tag number and put him back over the side. Slow work, one fish at a time, and I am glad this is a collaborative project and that I am not doing all 100,000 fish myself.
The tagging is funded by the federal agency tasked with managing the nation’s fish resources, the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), a part of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, but is not directly run by them. The reason for this arrangement is simple, and speaks directly to one of the major rifts that dominate the politics of fishing, namely that many fishermen just do not really trust the federal agency. Bringing together recreational and commercial fishermen, community groups, interested citizens and NMFS seemed to be one answer to this problem, and this cod tagging program was one of the children of this new marriage. So far it seems to be a good solution, with many citizens of all stripes involved in the tagging, and seemingly less perception that the data could be simply lost into some government computer at the end. These boats are working from south of Cape Cod to Nova Scotia, covering the whole of the Gulf of Maine, working to better understand the movements of a fish that many credit with being one of the principal driving forces for the settlement of New England, and one that was certainly for hundreds of years a strong pillar of the economy. I am glad to be working with such a storied resource, but not a trip goes by without some reminiscence about the way it used to be.
We tag about a dozen fish here before it slows down as the tide goes slack. It is a good little run of activity, but all the fish are fairly small. I don’t mind, as we are not keeping any, but it brings to mind a diagram I had seen recently, showing that the average size of codfish landed today compared to the average size of fish caught by the native Americans (estimated from bones found in their trash middens): a threefold reduction, from about ten pounds to just three or four pounds. Another interesting tidbit of information, I think, wondering if I am perhaps working and living during a time that will see the elimination of the codfish from sea. Could they really go the way of the passenger pigeon, as some researchers have shockingly predicted? Could this be just the end game for the species? I would like to think not, and would like to think that in fact I am contributing right now to the body of knowledge and to a developing human ethic that will in time support a return to the kind of mythical abundance one reads about in accounts of early New England. I think on this for a minute, and then return to the present, and remember I too want more codfish. “Let’s go on out to Jeffries Ledge and catch some fish” I say. We pack up and run another ten miles further offshore.
Jeffries is an area closed to commercial fishing, but not to recreational boats. It is turning into a beautiful day as we approach the noon hour, with the sea laying down, and the sunlight breaking sharply off the ripples. We are not the only ones with fishing on the mind this fine day, and I count 17 recreational boats, all fishing for groundfish. Here I drop the line with anticipation, and within 30 seconds feel the heavy tug of a fish. As I bring it up, two other rods bend down with fish. “OK,” I think, “now we are into them, and we’ll tag a few!” This fish stretches to 24 inches, with a heavy head and belly, probably ripe with spawn. A four-inch-long whiting is sticking up the codfish’s throat, showing an abundance of feed on the bottom. I let her go with a good splash, hopefully to be recaptured a year or two or more from now, bringing us some good data. This particular fish will bring good fortune to the lucky fisherman as well, in the form of a one hundred dollar bill. Every tag return received by the Gulf of Maine Research Institute gets a reward, like a mug or a T-shirt, and every tenth fish (like this one) carries a special $100 cash reward tag. The cod are coming aboard regularly now, and we have soon tagged over 50 for the day. Another 15 fish or so and we call it a day, snatching our lunch between carrying fish to or from the rail, recording the data, sorting out lines, rebaiting hooks and tagging fish.
Closed to commercial fishing, this area is obviously popular for recreational fishing. There are some who say that such reserve areas should be off limits to all types of fishing. The question here involves the division of common property rights, which is inevitably a very thorny issue. Folks up and down the coast hold these fish close to their hearts because they and their ancestors have garnered their living from them or fished them for sport – or, for many, for the sense of knowing there is a healthy environment out there in the ocean. Any future management or conservation plan will have to account for all these points of view. Today’s tagging work today should contribute information in some small way towards the larger management effort. On the way back in to Portland I stretch out on the engine box, warmed by the sun and the engine, but am awakened some time later to cries of “whale!” I sit up to see a large finback sliding through the water, with a bulk and length like a freight train, arching up as he sounds, and as I lie back down I reflect that the whale, too, may be concerned how our stewardship of the marine environment turns out.
For more information on the Northeast Regional Cod Tagging Program please see www.codresearch.org.