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R TS WEEKEND

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By SUSAN COCKING
Herald Outdoors Writer

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UM scientists work to preserve overfished species!

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The research vessel Calanus has had a spectacular week of fishing four miles off Miami -100 sailfish, 20 swordfish and more mahi-mahi than the crew could count. "I was jumping up and down like a little kid," said Jerry Ault, assistant professor at the University of Miami's Rosenstiel School. The fish aren't exactly wall tro.phies. They range in size from microscopic to four inches long. Instead of trolled bally hoo, plankton and shrimp-dipping nets were used to capture-.them. The tiny billflsh -perfectly formed miniature wall-hangers even at I month old -:- are being harvested as specimens, for a thret;-to-five-ye~r stud.y aImed at shorIng up theIr sagging populations. According to the Billfish Foundation, swordfish, blue marlin and white marlin are overfished to the point that reproduction can't keep up with harvest. Sailfish reproduction is keeping up -but just barely. .In order ~o bet~er ~anage the, bllifish sJ?Cc!es, ~cle~tlsts need to kn?w theIr 11ft; hlsto!les and populatlon dynamIcs. RIght now, that knowledge is filled with blank spaces. "The future of fishing is tied to production of young," said Tom Capo, manager of the University of Miami's experimental hatchery. "What's happening to the fish betwcen the larval stage and adults? Why is the fishery being exploited?" About four years ago, UM researchers began trying to answer those questions by collectingjuvenile billfish and taking them back to the lab for study. None of the specimens lived more than three days. They flitted about the tanks in constant motion, often upside dow~, refusing to eat. T,his week, assisted by a $50,000 Hoover Foundation grant, rcsearchers took the lab to the fishing grounds -collecting and ~tudying tiny billfish on board the

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SUSAN COCKING I Herald Staff STUDY BEGINS: UM scientists harvested bill~ish as specimens for a three-to-five-year study aimed at shoring up sagging populations. I Calanus. gives way ,to a depth of 400 feet. Still, Capo admits, the fish are Ault believes billfish, spawning acting stressed out -even' in their occurs from late Al?nl through home waters. October when upwellings of cold, "They're like mustangs -very nutrient-rich water bubble to the excitable," Capo said. "How do surface to feed the young. we r.~solve this stress -that's the .'Spawning is going on during key., periods of high food productivCapo plans to try varIous coll,eC- ity,.' Ault said. .'[Billfish] are: tlon methods. ,Instead of scooping using the physical system to optithe fish ~p In nets, snorkelers mize survivorship..' would get Into the water and coax them to swim into sample jars. Ault is especially fascinated by That technique would avoid juvenile billfish behavior. He scra,pi~g I?rotective slime off the w~tched as a, four-in~h sailfish babIes skIn. ~nfted al.ong sIdeways In a weed. Another difficulty is the fish's line, posIng as a blade of grass, reaction to confinement. Like then rolled up and over to eat a tigers pacing in a cage, they don't larval fish. adjust well to barriers. As adults, "They're the King Kongs of the they travelhunting thousands of miles sea " he said . "They eat what they constantly for food; finite wa~t." space does not compute. Capo, ~opes to resol,ve the p~oblem durIng future cruIses and In the laboratory. Among the observations from this week's cruise: Sailfish larvae outnumbered swordfish lO to l -.'1 a reversal of UM professor Don De Sylva's findings in the '60s and '70s, before swordfish were overexploited. Much of the larvae is being harvested just below the surface where the 90-foot-deep coral reef , , TIm Cho~te, a Mla~lan who operates a bl,llfiSh r,esort In lztapa, G~temala, IS heIP~ghti~ f~~s:h~ U study throug y.: FoundatIon.

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believe in the other edge of the sword," Choate said. "This is a lot more efficient way to give 1 1 money so you're not fighting political battles. You have a tenfold return on your investment compared to what you"d invest in a stop-the-harvest motion..' ;

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