Invasion of the spiny dogfish. It doesn't sound too bad, having a few dogfish around, but wait until you hear what's happening. It's worse than ocean zombies...Or is it? Spiny dogfish are getting blamed for ruining fishing, when New England fishermen have been doing a good job of ruining fishing themselves. Catching too much of many fish...even catching too many dogfish. Now they're blaming the victim? Check here for the rest of the story.
Now, back to the dogfish zombie invader doomsday warning...
A plague of spiny dogfish (Squalus acanthias) is interfering with fisheries in coastal states from Maine to North Carolina. Unprecedented numbers of these voracious predators are clogging nets, stealing bait and ruining the catch in fishery after fishery, needlessly penalizing the affected fishermen and coastal fishing communities. In addition to this direct interference with other fisheries, dogfish are eating vast quantities of much more valuable species, negating the effects of drastic management-mandated fishing effort reductions in those fisheries. Fishermen are sacrificing to conserve extremely important recreational and commercial species and their efforts are doing little more than providing more food for an ever-increasing population of dogfish.
How have we gotten to this sorry state? How have we let a low value species like the spiny dogfish become so plentiful that it is standing in the way of the successful rebuilding of other, far more valuable species and costing the coastal economies of a dozen states tens of millions of dollars? The simple answer is that’s what federal law requires.
OK, in case you haven't figured it out yet, blogfish thinks this is a bunch of hooey. But go ahead and decide for yourself, it's a free country. Tweet
