The watermen of Tilghman Island – population 854 – had been harvesting perch, shad, oysters, herring and rockfish for centuries when scientific fisheries management became a widely used tool for regulating fish harvest in the United States. The idea is to manage annual harvests so aquatic species can be harvested in perpetuity. In the late 1970s, the rockfish population was in crisis and Congress passed an law that imposed a moratorium on striped bass or rockfish.
These days the fish are at more sustainable levels and rockfish are again being fished – under rules that regulate the kinds of nets that can be used, the size of the fish, total weight of each haul, and the times of year they can be fished.
Journalist and documentary filmmaker Catherine Rentz has been reporting for the Baltimore Sun about a multi-year, half-million-dollar rockfish poaching operation on the Eastern shore. She’s here with us in the studio today.
More of our interview with Catherine Rentz:
