Casting for a 

 new catch 



By Sarah Friday Peters 



Sea robins get no respect. 



You might say they're the Rodney 

 Dangerfield offish. 



And you might as well add trigger- 

 fish, amberjack, pigfish and rays to the 

 category, too. 



All it takes is one barbed stinger, a 

 spiny fin or an odd-looking shape for a 

 fisherman to shun a fish. 



The National Marine Fisheries Ser- 

 vice estimates that recreational fisher- 

 men catch more than 33 million of 

 these less favored fish each year. But of 

 the 78 species that they reel in in the 

 Southeast, they only keep about 10 or 

 12, says Jim Murray, Sea Grant's 

 Marine Advisory Service director. 



Anglers reject most of the other 66 

 species for more popular fish like 

 grouper, redfish, snapper and 

 mackerel. 



Commercial fishermen, too, often ig- 

 nore certain species, calling them 

 "trash fish," "garbage fish," and "odd- 

 ball species." 



The image problem comes at a time 

 when consumers want more seafood 

 than ever. And pressures on marine 

 resources are increasing to meet these 

 demands. 



Now a fledgling campaign hopes to 

 gain new respect for the Dangerfields 

 of fish. With education, supporters say, 

 fishermen may see these ugly duck- 

 lings as beautiful swans. 



NMFS, the Gulf and South Atlantic 

 Fisheries Development Foundation, 

 Sea Grant and other fisheries and 

 research organizations began workingj 

 toward the transformation about four 



Their projects target commercial and 

 recreational interests, but fisheries 

 managers agree that changes in the 

 commercial industry will have the big- 

 gest impact. 



U.S. fishermen have netted about the 

 same number of pounds of traditional 

 food fish for 45 years, Murray says. 

 Now most of these species are being 

 fished to capacity. 



To satisfy our hunger, we import 70 

 percent of our seafood, says Richard 

 Lord, information specialist with the 

 Fulton Fish Market in New York City. 



"We don't have the fishery resources 

 to supply the white-fleshed fish most 

 consumers here require," Lord says. "If 

 we could develop markets for some of 

 the lesser-known seafoods, we'd be 

 able to offset some of our imports," he 

 adds. 



The irony is, Lord says, that the U.S. 

 coastline stretches from the Arctic to 

 the tropics and allows for a huge varie- 

 ty of seafood. But European countries 

 with much smaller coasts have a bigger 

 variety of seafood products. 



"The point is," Murray says, "we need 

 to use some of that protein we're throw- 

 ing away." 



Take squid, butterfish, dogfish and 

 herring, for instance. These four 

 species occur in large numbers in U.S. 

 waters, but demand in domestic mar- 

 kets has been small, Murray says. A 

 limited market means low value to the 

 states' commercial fishermen. 



