When Shawn Shiner heard that bluefin tuna were being caught off Cape Hatteras, he took a day off work and headed to the Outer Banks in hopes of hooking a big one. There have been thousands of bluefin off the coast of northeast North Carolina since mid-February. But it was all restricted to enforced quotas to prevent overfishing in the eastern Atlantic Ocean and Mediterranean Sea.
According to local fishermen something absolutely has to be done because the U.S. stands the most to lose. It is fact that bluefin are prized by sports anglers for their size and by commercial watermen who sell the highly sought-after meat for sushi in Japan and in upscale domestic markets such as New York and Chicago. Asian sushi buyers have paid up to six figures for giant bluefins. A 300-pounder like the one caught by Shiner might have brought in $4,000 to $8,000 during the commercial bluefin season.
Fishing is a big business on the Outer Banks. Passenger fees for all charter boats were $55.7 million in coastal North Carolina, according to a 2009 report by the state’s Marine Fisheries division and administered by North Carolina Sea Grant. A proposal that would have banned international trade in bluefin tuna was defeated March 18 at a United Nations conference in Doha, Qatar.
This is true that many countries are catching double the quotas set by the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas with no repercussions, said Rom Whitaker, captain of the Release, a charter fishing boat on Hatteras Island. Bluefin tuna are caught along the Eastern seaboard commercially and recreationally under tight regulation.
