Instead of kneejerk responses to dogfish...

[RIROCKHOUND]

I dont do that either...
and I didnt say they were 'experts' in fact expert never appeared in my post
Taking one quote out of context doesnt mean the fisherman is automatically wrong. Not every Comm. wants to rape the ocean you know.

Also my other main objection to what you said was that dogfish are primarily scavengers and not predators...

I never once sided with the 'experts', I'm a scientist, I tend to believe numbers (collected the right way). but on the flip side, enough anecdotal or personally observed evidence can be pretty damning as well. There are plainly alot of Dogfish around, more than I ever remember seeing/catching/hearing about. That tells me that something has changed in the ecosystem, and that it is a bad thing all around.

I have also never intentionally beheaded a dogfish, I get annoyed yes, but dont assume what you dont know

[clambelly]

Originally Posted by RIROCKHOUND

Not every Comm. wants to rape the ocean you know.

thank you.

[Bass Babe]

Managers are required to err on the side of caution when formulating regs if there isn't enough conclusive info to go on. Dogfish reproduce very slowly -- 2 to 16 pups in a litter every 22 months. So I can understand where mg't is coming from.

That said, I can see where recs and comms are coming from as well. There's tons of dogs out there. They ball up gillnets and scavenge the catch from them. They steal bait. It's possible that they're filling the niches of recovering groundfish. I've heard that off NH, you can barely catch a gadid to save your life, but whether you want them or not, the dogs are there. They can keep 600 pounds a day, but that quota can be reached in a half hour.

I hope the dogfish numbers and locations are just some sort of anomaly from the weird weather this year and other factors and that the dogfish problem doesn't persist...though they're way easier to handle than monkfish.

In defense of "scientists", we're working on picking up the pieces from over 100 years of crappy or nonexistent fisheries management, and we're doing what we can. Everybody -- comms, recs, mgrs, scientists...we all want a balanced environment. It's just going to take a while, with lots of trial and error, to get it functioning again.