I don’t think I’ll get many angry letters if I describe the monkfish as one of the homeliest creatures in the northwest Atlantic, if not the homeliest.
Also known as goosefish, the monkfish is a member of the anglerfish family Lophiidae, and is distinguished by a fleshy appendage, known as the illicium, that protrudes from its head to attract prey within grasp of its large and freakish jaws.
Distributed widely from the Gulf of St. Lawrence to Cape Hatteras, the monkfish is a staple in the Asian food market, historically keeping prices high and stable.
“Back in 1999 and 2000, we saw prices at an all time high,” said Hank Soule, who manages the Portland Fish Exchange. “As Europeans sought other suppliers for cheaper products those prices leveled off in 2001 and 2002. Recently, we have seen (monkfish) consistently get between $1.30 and $1.40 a pound – a decent price by most standards.”
Considering market instability in other marine resources, either due to economics or regulatory changes, the monkfish may hold promise for an industry long plagued by boom and bust cycles. “As the middle class in Asia continues to grow in huge numbers, there is likely to be a substantial demand for monkfish over the long term,” said Soule.
But as with any fishery, the challenge for scientists, fishermen and managers is to match fishing effort with the productive capacity of the resource. During the1990s, concerns were raised about high landings of juvenile monkfish. In response, the New England and Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Councils developed a joint management plan in 1999 that treats monkfish as two stocks: northern, from Maine to Cape Cod, and southern, from Cape Cod to North Carolina.
A number of measures were put in place in to prevent overfishing: access to the fishery was limited, closures during spawning periods went into effect, maximum trip limits were set, a minimum fish size was imposed, and gear restrictions were implemented. In 2001 and 2004, the New England Fishery Science Center conducted stock assessment surveys and, in the same years, cooperative assessments were conducted using the fishing vessel MARY K out of Woods Hole, Mass.
The most recent analysis found that the neither the northern nor southern monkfish stocks were overfished, but added that the data were not sufficiently reliable to be certain of the health of the fishery. It was also noted that there appeared to be a decline in the average size and age of monkfish captured.
Managers have taken a cautionary approach to managing the resource, most recently restricting a special access program that allowed fishermen to target monkfish in light of strict regulations on other species like cod and flounder. But the relatively high abundance and value of monkfish has led fishermen and scientists to seek more information more about this peculiar animal.
In the past five years, a number of collaborative research projects have tracked the fish’s movements, analyzed its genetic make-up and designed selective nets for the fishery. Last year, Dr. Pingguo He, a scientist at the University of New Hampshire, and Dennis Robillard, a commercial fisherman from Eliot, Maine, were awarded a $25,000 development grant from the Northeast Consortium to design and test gear capable of retaining legal-size monkfish while releasing juveniles back into the sea.
“The goal is to reduce undersized monkfish catch in groundfish and monkfish trawls so as to reduce discard mortality and help rebuild the stock,” said Dr. He. Trials begin next year.
“Monkfish have always been something fishermen could count on as far as price. With so much uncertainty out there, if we could find a way to target this species more effectively, it might help some get by during these difficult times,” said Robillard. q
Mike Crocker is the editor of Collaborations, a report on collaborative fisheries research conducted in the Gulf of Maine and Georges Bank. For a free subscription, email mike@namanet.org.