In the Fall of 2016, we initiated a volunteer vessel catch and effort program to monitor charter, recreational, and small -scale commercial catch and effort around Puerto Rico. This research is funded by the Puerto Rico Department of Natural and Environmental Resources. We started this research to collect information about fish aggregating device catch and effort but dovetails with our overall research on dolphinfish.
We have logged a total of 2,596 fishing trips and when examined by year over the monitoring period, annual catch success for all logged trips has decreased from 65% to 49%. Annual Catch success is defined as the number of annual trips anglers landed one target species (dorado, tuna, or wahoo) or released a billfish. Looked at another way, the percentage of annual trips that resulted in a no catch for outings i.e., getting skunked, has increased from 35% to 51% over the monitoring period. In addition to the vessel catch and effort data, we introduce additional evidence in this video that shows changes in catch success off Puerto Rico through our years of research on the island. This video was released in our March 2024 eNewsletter. Check out our newsletter (beyondourshores.org/news) for the data we used to put this analysis and statement together.