In recent years sustainability has become a buzzword in the seafood industry as people have started to increasingly want to reconnect with their food and where it comes from.
Unfortunately for the commercial fishing industry, a few unsustainable fishing practices across the globe have cast a bad light across the industry. False and inaccurate information about commercial fishing has been spread by numerous documentaries, articles and websites. They paint commercial fishermen as greedy individuals who want nothing more than to strip the ocean bare and leave nothing left.
This is far from the truth. The reality is that most commercial fisherman, especially those in the U.S., care deeply about our resources and the preservation of them. Many of us not only harvest fish, but work tirelessly behind the scenes advocating for what we harvest. We also work as scientists in our industries, collecting data that would otherwise be difficult for scientists and managers to acquire.
One of the ways that sablefish (black cod) fishermen work as scientists is by participating in the sablefish tag program. Various management agencies like NOAA and ADF&G perform surveys where sablefish are caught, fitted with a small plastic tag, and returned to the ocean. When fishermen catch a fish that has been tagged, we record various information about the fish including; where we caught it, how much it weighs, its length, sex, and what depth it was caught at. This information is sent in along with the tag to the agency that tagged the fish. In return, we get a small prize such as a baseball cap or t-shirt, and sometimes a cash prize! We also get to sell the fish that was tagged, ensuring no fish goes to waste. Information collected from this tagging program across decades has been used to help scientists better understand sablefish migration patterns, which is crucial to managing the species well.
This tagged sablefish was caught on a recent trip in central gulf of Alaska by the F/V Sherrie Marie. It was tagged by ADF&G. At the end of the year, ADF&G will send information about this fish back to us such as how many years ago it was tagged and where it was caught during the tagging survey.
By Molly Ekstrom, First Mate, F/V Sherrie Marie