Should fishers manage their own quotas?

Most everyone knew that Jim Ruhle had strong feelings about dogfish - they just didn't know how strong - at least, not until he arrived clutching a box full of dead dogfish pups at a recent meeting of the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council.

The Wanchese, N.C., fisherman, who serves on the council that helps set fishing quotas, pulled the box into full view, displaying its contents as proof the scientific surveys were wrong and that dogfish were plentiful and steadily reproducing. The dogfish, he said, had come up in his net along with other fish with no special effort on his part.

"Tell me how I should ignore that," Mr. Ruhle shouted. "Just walk away from it? ... Then I am doing a disservice to me and ... the industry I represent."

Actually, federal taxpayers pay Ruhle to serve on the council - and he took an oath - to represent the public. Still, he and the council later voted for a quota of 8.8 million pounds, more than double the limit scientists had recommended to restore the dogfish.

Dogfish have a long and murky history in New England fishing. But one thing is clear: The lowly denizen of the deep is quickly becoming a posterfish for how America is mismanaging its fisheries' resources. The dogfish and 85 other species - more than a third of the nation's 237 commercial fish stocks whose status is known - are overfished, a new report found. That's up from 14 species in 1976, when the US set up its current management system.

And while fish stocks off the coasts of Europe, Africa, and Asia are also dwindling, the US appears to have a bigger problem caused, in part, by its unique approach. More than a quarter century ago, after the US expanded economic control of the ocean to 200 miles offshore, Congress effectively put the fishing industry in charge of its own catch in the form of eight fishery-management councils. And if the dogfish is any indication, that decision now looks suspect.

"These councils are making risky management decisions with fish stocks around the clock," says Josh Eagle, coauthor of a new Stanford University study funded by The Pew Charitable Trust. It identifies a lack of diversity of viewpoints on the councils - and conflicts of interest permitted by law - as the biggest stumbling blocks to good stewardship of the nation's fisheries.

"If we passed a law that said that it was OK for Defense Department employees to take bribes from defense contractors - well, that's essentially what we've done with the fishing sector," he says. "We've said to fishermen, 'It's OK to enrich yourselves at the expense of the public.' We built this into the system."

Next month, a presidential commission is expected to recommend to Congress ways to fix problems with the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act - possibly including tightening rules against conflicts of interest.

Examples of conflicting interests are often difficult to pinpoint because voting alliances and deals are often obscure, observers say. But the dogfish offers an unusually clear-cut case.

As a rule, commercial fishermen loathe dogfish (3- to 4-foot sharks). They scare away valuable cod and flounder. They clog nets, writhe on deck with their sharp spines ready to jab, requiring crews to painstakingly cut them out and throw them overboard. Decades ago, Massachusetts even offered a bounty to try to get rid of the prickly species.

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