2017 Rhode Island Squid Report

[BillG]

Check out this article about the overfishing of squid by net in the Nantucket/Martha's Vineyard area. http://conservefish.org/2017/01/23/marth...o-stripas/

 

 I think this may be why we're not getting as good squid runs as we are used to.

 

Interesting read. I'm not sure the reduction in stripers (which happened up and down the coast) has anything to do with commercial squid fishing in MV, exactly. However, I recall from my childhood that you could go down to GI and fill a 5-gal. bucket per hour. The woman across the street from me used to fill 3 buckets per night. She would also haul in buckets of tinker mackerel, which have been mostly gone for decades. As the season rolled on, she would bring home buckets of snapper blues, which used to load into Newport harbor all summer. And, of course, the herring runs and the eel runs are mostly gone too. So we used to have tons of bait around for 12 months of the year and now we have less bait for a shorter period of time. So it's possible that a general reduction of bait has caused some localized depletion of stripers. That said, of bigger concern is that this same type of scenario is happing in the Chesapeake, Delaware, and Hudson River areas where the stripers spawn and spend their first year or two of life. So they have reduced quantity and quality of food, thereby increasing fish mortality in the 0-3 year range.