Recreational fishing regs put squeeze on charters

FISHING CHARTERS attract tourists from the rest of the Northeast but few Rhode Islanders, the local boat captains say. /
FISHING CHARTERS attract tourists from the rest of the Northeast but few Rhode Islanders, the local boat captains say. /

Much of the tourism in Rhode Island revolves around the water – from “WaterFire Providence,” to hiking along Newport’s Cliff Walk, to kayaking on an inland river, to staying at a bed-and-breakfast on the coast – but many residents forget what an economic driver fishing can be, said charter-boat Captain John Rainone, president of the Rhode Island Party & Charter Boat Association since 1990 and owner of L’il Toot Charters.
In Rhode Island about 150 charter boat companies do business, 57 of which are members of the association. But just as in the commercial fishing industry, it is getting more difficult to earn a living these days.
They are part of the recreational fishing industry – not counted as commercial fishing vessels – so they are not lumped into the statistics for commercial catches, making it difficult to say just how much of an economic impact they carry for Rhode Island, said Captain Nick Butziger, owner of Sea Hawk Charters and immediate past president of the group.
“You might say we’re one-half of 1 percent of the recreational catch, so statistically we don’t exist,” he said. “But our catch ratio is high because we’re full-time captains; we do it every day.”
And recently, there have been attempts to gauge the industry’s impact.
According to a January 2007 report compiled by Ninigret Partners for the Rhode Island Saltwater Anglers Association, the recreational saltwater angling business in the state accounts for about $159.6 million in direct and indirect expenditures each year – including hotels, food, bait and charters. Charter boats account for about 153 full-time jobs and $1.2 million in direct wages, according to the study.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service estimated that 60 percent of all recreational fishermen, or about 82,000, come from out of state each year. At the same time, Ninigret estimated that about 20 percent of those visitors head out to sea on board Rhode Island charter boats.
As large as the numbers are, those in the industry feel like hurdles are being thrown in their way. First, said Rainone, there is not enough marketing support from the state.
“It’s funny – I went to The Big E [fair] in Massachusetts this year, and I went through all the different states, and they’re all the same,” he said. “Nobody pushes their charter-boat industry, other than a little blurb inside the ‘Welcome to Massachusetts’ or ‘Welcome to Rhode Island’ pamphlets that they put out.”
Rainone said that while individual business Web sites and the association’s recently heightened presence at local boat shows have increased local interest, “predominantly, I’d say most of our business is out of state,” he said.
“We draw a lot from Connecticut, Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey and some from Pennsylvania. Mostly from closer states, but I’ve also got some from California who come over here for a week each year to do some fishing.”
Because they are not commercial fishermen, there are few state regulations guiding charter boat captains, though they are issued licenses.
They are, however, governed by federal and international tuna regulations, passed down from the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tuna. And recent changes in the regulations have had a dampening effect on their ability to take customers out to sea.
During the 1980s, the Atlantic Continental Shelf about 100 miles offshore was a booming fishing area for Rhode Island charter boats. Taking customers out there to fish is a more lucrative proposition for the charter captains, since ocean excursions can cost more than $1,000, while those in Narragansett Bay and close to the shore usually run about $450. The new tuna regulations, developed when Atlantic the yellowfin and bigeye tuna stock dropped in the early 1990s and tightened again for bluefin tuna fishing in 2000, have cut into that part of the business in a dramatic way.
“The tuna regulations, you might want to say, are absurd,” Butziger said. “Would you want to spend $900 on a boat – and you’ve got a crew on top of that with tips and such – to go fishing and catch one little tuna? You can only catch one in the 27-to-47-inch range and two in the 47-to-72-inch range. That’s per boat.” •

No posts to display