New rules to better track saltwater catch

Federal regulators Wednesday corrected years of faulty data in unveiling a new system for estimating recreational saltwater fishing activity, but some fishermen weren't biting.

The changes, which follow years of angry skepticism from fishing boat captains and dockside anglers as limits tightened, seek to get a truer picture of fish populations.

The improvements "better reflect what is happening on the water," said Eric Schwaab, acting assistant secretary of commerce for conservation and management at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

One big change is in how regulators extrapolate the annual fishing take based on samplings at marinas and calls to anglers. Some boats that caught no fish were sometimes excluded from the sample, artificially raising estimates.

The new formulas give those factors the proper weight. Next steps include more accurate surveys of anglers using state fishing registries, and more thorough dockside samples of fishing trips.

Pat Augustine, a commissioner representing New York for the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, called the effort a "major improvement in helping us find out what the real status of our stocks are, and bringing credibility to the process."

But Jim Hutchinson, managing director of the Recreational Fishing Alliance, an angler and industry group, said the problem is that new formulas continue to use data from sometimes faulty samples.

"Tear down a rickety house and try to rebuild it using the same old rotted A-frame and you're still left with a rickety old house," he said.Steve Witthuhn, captain of the charter boat Top Hook out of Montauk, said, "It's the same people running it," referring to federal regulators who are implementing the changes, which took six years to develop, test and implement.Still, Witthuhn said, "We'd like to think where there's light there's hope, and they learned from their mistakes."

Schwaab said the agency is trying to improve fishing surveys, too. It's experimenting with calls and mailings to licensed anglers in state registries to do its samples, rather than random calls to homes in coastal communities.

It's also improving dockside surveys by making sure that ports and boats that typically underfish are counted, not just those with high fishing activity. There are also changes made that prevent those who conduct the dockside surveys from falsifying reports.