Regional Management Helped White Marlin

ICCAT has since capped the total white marlin catch at 400 tons for the entire Atlantic after the last ICCAT assessment for white marlin that was conducted in 2011. The next stock assessment for white marlin is slated for 2018, so we’ll have to wait a year to see whether things are improving. However, if you talk to recreational anglers along the mid-Atlantic, they’ll probably tell you the white marlin fishing has been great for a while now and it’s only getting better. Some of the more-significant management measures have included: • 1988: Prohibition on commercial harvest or sale of Atlantic billfish • 1998: Size limits instituted for blue and white marlin • 2000: Time/area closures to the Atlantic pelagic longline fleet • 2000s-present: Increased voluntary use of circle hooks by recreational anglers, with mandatory use in billfish tournaments in 2007 • 2001: Recreational harvest capped at 250 white/blue marlin • 2004: Required the Atlantic PLL fleet to use circle hooks I was recently asked to give a presentation on U.S. billfish conservation measures for the Third Regional Workshop on Caribbean Billfish Management and Conservation, where IGFA and a group of other organizations are working toward developing enhanced billfish-management measures for the region. While assembling my presentation and outlining the aforementioned positive steps that the United States has taken for billfish, I reached out to my friend and colleague, Dr. John Graves, who has been chairman of the U.S. My questions were simple: Is there data that supports the observations of U.S. recreational anglers, and, if so, do you believe that domestic regulations might at least partially explain this. Recently, NMFS released its annual Stock Assessment and Fisheries Evaluation report, which tallies the white marlin caught and released by the U.S. PLL fleet each year. Numbers have increased here as well, from 943 fish in 2011 to nearly 3,000 in 2016. The take-home point here is that even though billfish are a highly migratory species that need to be managed at the international level by ICCAT, enhanced domestic and regional measures — like those put in place by the United States and those we are working toward in the different Caribbean nations — can make a real difference in some species. I say “some” because, unlike white marlin, blue marlin have not experienced the same increases in recreational CPUE and PLL release numbers.