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COMMENTARY: It’s time for the FWC to tell the truth about its flawed tarpon study

BY GARY DUTERY - During the 2002-2004 tarpon fishing seasons, researchers with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission conducted a tarpon mortality study in Boca Grande Pass.

This study has been used and abused by the jig fishing community to create an invented validation of the drive-by carnage they and their motorized surfboards have left in their wake as another tarpon season approaches.

It’s a complicated issue. But let’s see if we can make it simple. So simple that the jig guides and the FWC might see what’s really going on. The rest of you can tag along for the ride.

The Boca Grande Fishing Guides Association has petitioned the courts and the FWC to have the tarpon jig recognized as a snagging device. The argument is simple. The jig, and the techniques used to fish the jig, are designed to snag tarpon. Whether intentionally or inadvertently. It doesn’t matter. Not to us. And certainly not to the tarpon.

Snagging tarpon is, by FWC regulation, illegal. Because the jig is a snagging device, the guides argue, those who use it – regardless of their intentions – are illegally snagging tarpon.

Most proponents of the tarpon jig see the device as an alternative method of fishing Boca Grande Pass. They do not see it as a snagging device. We know they do not set out to snag tarpon. Most of them. But this is what is happening. And an objective look at the FWC study – a project that began with what we thought were the best of intentions but collapsed under pressure from the jig community – should lead most, if not all, jig proponents to take a really good, hard, second look at what they are doing to one of Florida’s most valuable fisheries.

To understand the tarpon study is to recognize that the researchers who conducted the study, and their bosses within the FWC bureaucracy, reluctantly prostituted themselves to political and personal pressures to ignore the data and fabricate conclusions of convenience.

The FWC scammed you out of countless thousands of dollars of research money by trashing the results of this multi-year study, and resorting to pretzel logic to abdicate its own common-sense findings and create a make-believe fishery where snagged tarpon aren’t snagged and dead tarpon aren’t dead.

It’s been six years since the study’s “summary report” was released. Calling it a joke wouldn’t do it justice. Not six years ago, not today.

The Summary Report can be read online at BocaBeacon.com.

Here is what the study found. And what it didn’t find.

Of the 138 tarpon hooked using the break-away jig, just 30 percent (41 fish) were brought to the boat. This means that 70 percent of the tarpon hooked by jiggers on their light tackle broke off.

By comparison, nearly half (48 percent, or 44 fish) of those hooked using live bait methods were brought to the boat. Live baiters use heavy Dacron line. A break-off most commonly results from a spit hook, not a broken line. The distinction is important.

The number of fish landed per hour using live bait was three times that of fish landed per hour by anglers using the break-away jig. The key word – not explained in the report – is “landed.” Sure, jig guides will hook you up. You get 15 or 20 seconds worth of excitement before that butt-hooked tarpon breaks off. But if you actually want to see your tarpon, take a photo of the fish, the FWC says you are three times more likely to bring a tarpon to the boat fishing live bait.

Live bait anglers averaged just 11 minutes to bring their tarpon to the boat. For jiggers, fight times were more than double, an average of 26 minutes – with the longest break-away jig fight lasting 1 hour and 38 minutes.

Science tells us that if you spend less time fighting a tarpon, its chances of survival improve substantially. But who needs science? Common sense tells us that if you spend less time fighting a tarpon, its chances of survival improve substantially. The FWC never bothered to explore why jiggers, on average, take twice as long to boat a fish than live baiters. Probably wasn’t all that important. Not when you have a political agenda to advance. And the FWC clearly had an agenda to advance. Read on.

For tarpon caught on the jig, the confirmed mortality rate was 13.6 percent. It was just 5.3 percent for tarpon caught using live bait methods and tackle. The FWC found that using the jig kills more than twice as many fish compared to live bait methods. To the average American who doesn’t understand FWC politics, this would seem pretty significant. But not to the FWC. Wonder why?

Foul hooking? Of the 47 fish caught by those using the jig, five were “defined” as foul-hooked. That’s 10 percent. Four of these fish were hooked in the head. One tarpon was hooked in the tail. Yeah, the tail.

There were 32 fish caught using live bait. None were foul hooked.

One more time. The FWC says 32 fish were caught using live bait. None, repeat, none were foul hooked. That’s none. As in zero. Zilch. Nada. Yet five, under the FWC’s generous definition of foul-hooked, were snagged. Snatched. Harpooned. Caught in an unsportsmanlike fashion. Did we mention that no live-bait fish were foul hooked? Kind of makes you wonder why? Unless, that is, you are the FWC.

The study found that live bait methods result in more tarpon brought to the boat, more fish caught per hour, fewer dead tarpon and no foul-hooked tarpon. End of argument. Right?

Well, not exactly. Not if you are the FWC. There is always an explanation for everything. Especially when politics demand an explanation.

The FWC sought to explain away the inconvenient results of its own study by concluding “fundamental differences in the two fishing methods make it difficult to compare them, and results must be interpreted in that light.”

Hello? The “fundamental differences” between jigging and live bait fishing were clearly obvious to anyone with a pulse prior to the study. Why, if these differences make it “difficult to compare them,” did the FWC spend thousands of taxpayer dollars to conduct a study to compare them?

Obviously, unless the FWC is prepared to admit that the agency is populated by idiots, the “difficulty” only seemingly emerged once the results were in. And the results, clearly, weren’t what the FWC wanted. The FWC wanted a study that was inconclusive. One that would give the FWC political wiggle room. Instead, the FWC came back with raw data that showed that live-bait techniques trumped jig-snag fishing. Not what the FWC wanted to hear. Not what the political hacks at the FWC could tolerate hearing. And certainly, not what they had custom-ordered.

The FWC study also concluded that “no significant differences were observed in catch-and-release mortality rates of tarpon caught by anglers using artificial jigs and live bait in Boca Grande Pass.” More than double isn’t significant?

The jig killed twice as many tarpon as live bait. Not significant? Multiply this by the number of tarpon that are caught in Boca Grande Pass every year. Yeah, it’s significant.

The FWC noted that sharks were responsible for all confirmed mortalities, and that they took place “using both methods of fishing.” Translation: The chance of a jig-hooked tarpon being attacked by a shark is more than twice that of a tarpon caught using live bait methods. Did the FWC researcher ever consider why? Maybe if you jig-fight a fish for 90 minutes using dental floss as tackle, you might as well harvest the thing and cut it up for chum to feed to the sharks.

And finally, the FWC concluded that “while more tarpon were foul-hooked using artificial bait than live bait, percentages were not unusually high and did not contribute negatively to the survival of tarpon.”

Stop laughing. Really. This is serious stuff. Let’s say this another way: “More tarpon were foul-hooked using artificial bait than live bait.” Or “no fish were foul-hooked using live bait.”

But here’s where the cover-your-butt politics kick in. Prior to the release of the FWC’s findings, the Boca Beacon obtained the raw data from the study through a demand for production of public records. At the time, we were told the final report on the study would be lengthy and was months away from completion. The Beacon published a story based on the raw data. A few days after the Beacon story appeared, the report – all eight pages of it – was posted on the FWC web site. Lengthy? Months away? Uh huh.

The Beacon also obtained the FWC’s emails concerning the study, also through a demand for production of public records. Among these hundreds of emails were messages from proponents of the break-away jig begging the study’s lead researcher to structure the results to shine the best possible light on the device. Some begged FWC officials not to release the data at all (We often wondered how it was they came to learn of our public records request? Did someone inside the FWC tell them? Pillow talk, perhaps?). But most of the emails from the jigging community focused on a certain part of the tarpon’s anatomy.

The “clipper.”

The clipper is part of the tarpon’s upper jaw. It is located aft of the mouth. About half of the tarpon caught on the jig were hooked in the clipper. Very few live bait tarpon were clipper-hooked.

If you counted clipper-hooked fish as foul-hooked fish, the jiggers would be screwed. And the FWC wasn’t going to screw the jiggers. As a result, some creative writing was required.

In its report, the FWC explained that the clipper – a bony thing located well behind the tarpon’s eye – was actually part of the tarpon’s mouth. And this is where the tarpon study finally came unhinged. You can read the report, but the FWC explained away the jiggers’ clipper snagged fish by suggesting that tarpon don’t eat with their mouths, they eat through the back of their eyeballs.

The explanation was so absurd, but so politically necessary, that the FWC would not allow the lead researcher to be present when the study was presented. This was verified by the emails the Beacon obtained. The FWC was concerned that under questioning she would fold up like a cheap lawn chair.

The Boca Grande Fishing Guides Association, through its petition to the courts and the FWC, simply wants the truth. The guides want to know why thousands of taxpayer dollars were wasted on a tarpon study in Boca Grande Pass that was marginalized and fictionalized by the FWC.

The Boca Grande Fishing Guides Association wants to depose the researcher – something the FWC desperately seeks to avoid – to ask the questions that need to be asked after all these years, and to examine the underlying pressures and relationships that clearly influenced her research and her conclusions.

Gary Dutery is editor of the Boca Beacon. Copyright 2010, the Boca Beacon. Reproduction of this article is prohibited without the consent of the Boca Beacon.