Fish Report 2/10/26

Boat, Seaside Boat Show & a Habitat Comment 2/10/26 

Greetings All, 

The Seaside Boatshow is this weekend in OC - Feb 13/14/15th. Have new Reef Ts & sweats, bags and stickers too. If everything at last remains in line? We'll have the Navy Dive boat at Sunset Boatyard tomorrow too. (Wed 2/11/26) I hope so. 

The Morning Star is slowly coming back together. Better right than quickly. Will be great to have new power. Lots of replaced everything really - her plumbing, wiring, fuel lines - paint where we could before the deep freeze.. Lots. 

Shelly snuck me in her carry on bag to visit her bestie in the Keys. Naturally we brought the cold with us. Did have a brief but very enjoyable yellowtail trip with Capt Cristina DeCosta. She's tog fished with me many a cold winter trip - decided to fish for a living. Dern sight warmer where she is at Robbies than here. A pretty skipper that loves to fish? I should imagine she's the Keys most eligible bachelorette! 

Have about a hundred hours (and a lifetime!) in the Essential Fish Habitat comment bellow. 2/11/26 is the last day to send comments to Jessica Coakley at  jcoakley@mafmc.org .. Cut and paste mine if you'd like.. 

Cheers All, 

Monty

Comment on MAFMC's Essential Fish Habitat Amendment.  

Capt. Monty Hawkins - 2/8/26. 

I support Alternative 2 for Essential Fish Habitat (EFH). 

Habitat is far more askew in the Mid-Atlantic Ocean than currently recognized. In my view, EFH has been diminished for every species under fed/state management in the Mid-Atlantic. 

The wording of the Magnuson-Stevens Act seems succinct to me. 

5) The term “conservation and management” refers to all of the rules, regulations, conditions, methods, and other measures (A) which are required to rebuild, restore, or maintain, and which are useful in rebuilding, restoring, or maintaining, any fishery resource and the marine environment; 

I believe broadening NOAA's knowledge of marine habitat is key if fisheries management is to create truly successful marine fisheries restorations, especially asking "where were fish & lobster caught in the early years after WWII? Are those places still productive today?" ..those questions will make today's 'maintain populations' style of management finally consider marine habitat. 

Management must consider locations that once offered decades of sustainable fisheries extractions--yet today do not. If an area produced catch a half-century ago or more, yet no longer does; habitat should be investigated for cause and, if altered, repaired to restore historical fisheries productions. 

Most simply? Find out what's missing and put it back. 

In this comment I hope to show how habitat loss has reshaped the spatial distribution and abundance of marlin, black sea bass, summer flounder, squid, lobster & our soft coral, sea whip, off the DelMarVa coast.

I'll also write about what I've called 'blackwater' (resuspended algae/organic detritus) since well before the nearly month long event after Hurricane Sandy in October 2012. 

Along DelMarVa we have a unique situation in the decline of ocean water quality, simply: Our part of the ocean turned green.

Had the decline of our region's 'deep blue sea now turned green' happened over the course of a few years, there would be public outrage and intense scientific scrutiny. Instead, a multi-generational shift happened. It took 60 years for the Mid-Atlantic's shelf waters to turn from blue to green. 

It continues to worsen. This loss of water quality is surely a result of losing a keystone filtration specialist, the oyster. While countless oyster restoration efforts are underway—and have begun to gain ground since restorationists shifted from shell to rock—NOAA should recognize water-quality decline is not confined to our major estuaries. Mid-Atlantic shelf waters are badly degraded. 

I have numerous reports from Ocean City's pelagic fishers that, at times, pea green water extends even beyond our canyons. 

In today's often visually impenetrable green water, billfish can no longer feed on nearshore grounds where they were once caught in number just 5 to 20 miles offshore well into the 1970s.

Apex pelagics cannot be restored to their historic inshore grounds off DelMarVa by managing harvest alone - regulating marlin catch cannot repair water quality. 

Highly migratory species fishery management is clearly working where water quality remains suitable. Records have been set by Ocean City anglers in recent years for most marlin caught in a day and most marlin caught in a year. It's clear that abundance is not the issue -- habitat is. 

Today marlin are rarely caught at the 30 fathom line & never at the 10 fathom line on shoals where they were historically caught in the 1940s/50s & 60s. That failure is because of the Mid-Atlantic's marine water quality decline. 

An angler from Florida can, for instance, target sailfish exactly where their father and grandfather did. DelMarVa anglers, however, must run at least 30 or 40 miles further offshore to have any chance of success for billfish. Here the Gulf Stream - among the world's most powerful currents - creates a slow gyre where it dams an already weakened southerly Labrador Current at Cape Hatteras. That's why ocean waters off DelMarVa do not flush as well as most. Large estuarine outflows of DE & Ches Bays are not swept away as is generally the case when a river or estuary's flow meets an ocean. 

This slow flushing of building algae and nutrient laden waters creates need of restoring this incredibly broad but broken benthic/pelagic coupling where estuarine oyster's vital filtration has been lost. For nearly 60 years the ecosystem service of biofiltration that once ensured a 'deep blue sea' in Mid-Atlantic nearshore waters has been lost. 

Now we have nutrient enriched estuarine outflows allowing algae to flourish making the Mid-Atlantic Ocean greener and greener. Without oyster restoration pushed to higher levels--industrial levels--anglers are unlikely to witness a return of nearshore marlin in coming decades. 

Apex pelagics have been pushed offshore because they cannot see to feed as they once did. Corals, however, are being pushed inshore because light cannot penetrate our sea water as deeply as it once did. 

As Chesapeake Bay lost its subaquatic vegetation when algae darkened its waters, so too will we see a continued worsening of viable sea whip habitat unless oyster restorations are ramped up. 

The time for discovering 'how to' restore oysters is past. 

There has been success. 

Now their filtering of an entire estuary must be restored. With oysters today at approximately 2% their historical number, there is much work to be done. 

As a recreational for-hire fisherman specializing in reef fisheries I have come to believe the habitable zone for our only temperate soft coral, sea whip--some of which are known to host zooxanthellae which, like tropical corals, convert sunlight into nutritition via photosynthate production--has contracted inshore owing, I believe, to the Mid-Atlantic's diminished water quality.  

My own video work plus diver reports & video had large colonies of sea whip even to 140 feet into the early 2000s. I believe 115 feet is about as deep as I've seen them thick in recent years - with fewer animals at 120. I should think in a pristine Mid-Atlantic depths of much closer to 150/160ft would have been likely. In tropical seas there exists a supremely well documented photosynthetic relationship between coral and their resident zooxanthellae at depths to beyond 200ft. 

I have monitored artificial reefs off DelMarVa for several decades and have never seen northern star coral or sea whip inside, beneath or beside a structure where sunlight cannot strike it. 

Like their tropical cousins, I believe our temperate corals too need sufficient water quality for light penetration. 

Why would sea whip only grow where there is light if not photosythatic/zooxanthellae symbiants - turning sunlight into food like plants. 

While my light penetration investigation is still a work in progress, what I'm learning leads me to believe sea whip can no longer survive at depths over 120 feet. 

But current science doesn't agree. I've long held our reefs and corals are poorly studied. Here and elsewhere sea whip is shown to only grow to 66 feet. 

https://www.dnr.sc.gov/swap/supplemental/marine/colorfulsawhip2015.pdf 

If sea whip only grew that shallow in the Mid-Atlantic the ocean would be  nearly dead.

A recent work: https://repository.library.noaa.gov/view/noaa/28288 -- "Sea whip coral Leptogorgia virgulata in the Mid-Atlantic Bight: Colony complexity, age, and growth" 

finds no photosynthetic use of zooxanthellae in our sea whip but cites: "Reefs of the Deep: The Biology

and Geology of Cold-Water

Coral Ecosystems"

Corals considered in that work are mostly beyond 100 fathoms. It does not test for zooxanthellae/light based feeding. Regardless, there is no mention of our sea whip, Leptogorgia virgulata, in the work.

For a few months of 2023 & 24 my crew took secci disk readings (a simple set of black and white discs lowered to the edge of visibility for measuring depth that's commonly used in scientific assesment) ..secci discs were lowered as we'd pause to add new concrete blocks or pyramids at various artificial reef permitted sites. (Reef materials are donated by either York Building Products, Kinsley Materials or Bear Concrete - begun in 2013, I'm approaching 50K boat deployed blocks on permitted sites, with many early drops now supporting corals. Over 4500 pyramids have been made by concrete plants with a mold I designed and donated to reef building efforts since 2020 - TYVM!) Secci discs do not measure total light penetration - they measure what the eye can see as an indicator. We often had shallow secci visibility readings of not 10 or 15 feet nearshore (as bad as 4 feet). 

Owing a long period of light easterly winds in summer 2024, however, we had the best water conditions I believe I've seen since the mid-1990s. It not only made for good mahi fishing; I saw a blue marlin and several wahoo 28 miles offshore and another blue just 14 miles out. That's amazingly close by today's measure when most serious marlin fishing begins around sixty miles off. Even in that brief period of the best water I can remember, across two months my crew never had a visual deeper than 45 feet. In truly clear seas secci disc visuals of up to 200 ft are said possible. 

A contraction of available sunlight has to be a certainty. Though surely there are many effects of diminished light, I do not understand them. My suspicion that sea whip cannot grow as deep as it did even just twenty years ago remains. 

Then too there's a major problem with the resuspension of dead algae. I've been calling it 'blackwater' for a long time. It messes up our fishing in a big way. 

After Hurricane Sandy in Oct 2012, resuspended algae blocked sunlight from our reefs for nearly a month. The nearshore Mid-Atlantic seafloor (especially in protected sloughs) is now so laden with dead algea that it's resuspension in heavy weather blocks all light from getting to the bottom. From what depth depends on a storm's ferocity - but complete blackouts occur.

I'm sure fish cannot feed well in it. For some species, perhaps they cannot feed at all. Sea bass will sometimes rise above the worst to feed on krill; summer flounder & tautog will not. 

As an illustration, 10 days after Sandy we found light penetration to the seafloor at an artificial reef 75 feet atop Jackspot Shoal with an u/w video camera. That same day in 75 feet of water at the Bass Grounds there was no visible light just 30 feet down. (The Bass Grounds is essentially a deep slough/valley 8 to 9 miles ESE of Ocean City MD. It's protected by a high shoal just east. This protection from the greatest of storm swells allows fantastic coral growth on our artificial reefs.) 

Divers have assured me video gear sees better than they can. If the camera couldn't see even half an inch, I sure doubt fish could either. 

Scientists are beginning to study blackwater - what they're calling 'blackwaves' - here a passage from a recent article: “We have long known that light levels are critical for photosynthetic organisms — like algae, seagrasses, and corals — and that factors that reduce light to the seafloor can impact them,” said co-author Bob Miller, a research biologist at UC Santa Barbara’s Marine Science Institute. “This study creates a framework for comparing such events, which we call darkwaves.”

“Light is a fundamental driver of marine productivity, yet until now we have not had a consistent way to measure extreme reductions in underwater light,” said lead author François Thoral, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Waikato and Earth Sciences New Zealand.

((see https://scitechdaily.com/scientists-are-tracking-mysterious-blackouts-beneath-the-sea/ ))

The Magnuson Stevens Act has Essential Fish Habitat as: Those waters and substrate necessary to fish for spawning, breeding, feeding, or growth to maturity.

Then adds:

..minimize to the extent practicable adverse effects on such habitat caused by fishing, and identify other actions to encourage the conservation and enhancement of such habitat.”

(C) direct and indirect habitat losses which have resulted in a diminished capacity to support existing fishing levels.

5) The term “conservation and management” refers to all of the rules, regulations, conditions, methods, and other measures (A) which are required to rebuild, restore, or maintain, and which are useful in rebuilding, restoring, or maintaining, any fishery resource and the marine environment; 

Always seemed pretty clear to me - there's been no action or concern about Mid-Atlantic seafloor habitat that I've seen though. 

I've offered many donated ocean trips for scientists and regulators to study how low recreational release mortality actually is; examine the value of natural & artifical reef habitat; and, from among my nonprofit work, have built artificial reef with 6+ tons of concrete aboard. 
In July 2007 I booked my boat out (the Morning Star) for an u/w video science trip . I carried 13 scientists to reef locations which NOAA's recent research had called 'sand waves.' At each stop my crew lowered a video camera to show those aboard significant seafloor growth and numerous fish -- they were looking at reef. 

Sadly, what I thought would be my grand finale that day was an area of slab rock in 110 feet of water that I'd last videoed as amazingly grown over with sea whip. 

It had been shaved clean in the three years since. Sea whip holdfast stems stuck up off the thick slab rock as if cut soybean stubble after harvest. Dense pockets of sea whip only remained where protected by rocky overlap - pockets of life where a trawl's footrope couldn't get at the sea whip's base. 

Here was a giant sea whip meadow likely lost to one crew's catch, probably in one day, while towing for summer flounder.

Today the area seems fairly robust again. I should video it soon. 

Another look, this time a 36 hour cruise by National Marine Fisheries Service scientist, Vince Guida, aboard a small NMFS boat in 2013 did indeed find natural substrates with both fish & coral at every location I had told him to check. 

Wasn't enough though. I've been telling Congress and NOAA about our reef habitat since 2001. Hardbottom habitat is EFH in every possible way, yet study languishes.

I haven't witnessed a habitat impact since Individual Fish Quotas (IFQs) were created nearly 20 years ago. IFQs do not protect habitat. It's just been a happy economic circumstance for our region that a lot of trawl quota has moved north. It's my understanding much of Maryland's trawl quota gets transferred/sold to NY/upper NJ. Several of our trawl skippers save summer flounder quota for after the fish leave hardbottoms and artificial reefs in early winter. They catch their remaining quota when flounder are atop offshore shoals in large number around Thanksgiving and do no damage to natural reefs that are only found in sloughs. 

Ocean fishing sport fishers target summer flounder on various reef habitats from June to Oct - sometimes into Nov. 

While I have read, and it seems spot on: "summer flounder spawn on hardbottoms in fall" but I cannot find the work. 

For me it's a reef fishery. I target fluke (summer flounder) exactly where I target sea bass and tautog. I've only caught them on sandy bottom (but still near reef) a few times. 

Unlike my fishing experience, in fisheries literature summer flounder are said to use sand bottoms - even though bycatch of sea bass can be high.

About twenty years ago I presented the idea of "putting lost habitat back" to MAFMC under the guidance of Pete Jensen as Chair in the mid 2000s. The council had wooden trap fishermen tell of growth on pots/traps in just a few months (something I was aware of from a year of trap fishing in 1984). "Well," the Council concluded, "if traps have such rapid growth then stern towed gears can scarcely have any long term impact" & the matter was closed. 

Yes, artificial reef too gathers some growths rather quickly - sometimes fish in hours and growth in weeks. Truly productive habitat however, especially corals, takes many years on the best of substrates--part of a decade for sea whip in the best circumstances, and many decades for northern star coral to grow in. Time to achieve good coverage also depends on coral spawning stock nearby. 

Where sea whip colonies are densest on artificial reef, we'll have good sea whip coverage on new reef materials in as little as 6 years. 

It used to take 15. 

I filmed both trawl and surfclam impacts to natural rock reef in the early 2000s (probably by the very clammer supplying my primary bait!)  Rock substrates, even if scraped bare, will regrow a reef community--including corals, assuming it is not reimpacted for over a decade. 

On natural bottoms regrowth would certainly be halted if gear impacts were recurring. 

After Hurricane Sandy we found whole areas of natural reef growth sand-blasted away in less than 75 feet of water along shallower parts of the Old Grounds off Delaware. A shallow artificial reef on the east side of the Bass Grounds was also swept clean of growth. Unfortunately, several scuba divers had previously described that Bass Grounds reef as "the most beautiful sea whip" they'd ever seen ..and now it was gone. 

After hurricane Sandy I also volunteered my boat so divers could investigate habitat damage at the Winter Quarter Corals in roughly 100 feet of water. While some whips were bruised ((where coral polyps were removed leaving their axial skeleton exposed - meaning the core of a sea whip that resembles thin wire was visible in places)) none were found swept away & no substrate was found denuded. Those reefs in 100ft survived Sandy while others in shallower water had not.

Our natural hardbottoms are almost all either ancient marsh or river related. We have precious little boulder off DelMarVa. Geologists tell me they doubt we have 'dropstones' from icebergs this far south. Boulder sure is rare though. Our remaining natural hardbottoms are either sandstone slabs, small cobble, or now-diminished areas of ancient marsh peat. Diminished - but we do have a few remaining areas of fantastically productive peat bottom. I had volunteer divers bring up a small sample they said was representative of everything nearby. To my amazement I was able to break this 'rock' and gently turn it back into a sandy clay mixture. It's a substrate barely hard enough for growths to attach yet makes amazingly productive fishing locations.

Despite being what our reef growths have obviously evolved to use, natural hard substrates--slabrock & cobble--take much longer to grow in post hurricane or stern towed gear impact. This owes to how low-lying these substrates are - how slight their vertical profile is. Where artificial reef and boulder are usually elevated - stand well off bottom - natural reef substrates often present a height profile of barely inches. In the case of slab rock especially, that low profile surface is nearly as flat as the hull of a sunken ship. Such a surface is difficult for sessile growth to form a holdfast to - even for mussels.

For that reason--low and flat--storm scour is much more destructive to natural substrates and low-profile artificial reef because strong currents loaded with sand remove growth as if being sand blasted - especially young reef. 

Where a substrate remains intact after a gear impact or hurricane, new growth will follow, as will fisheries productions, given an extended calm. 

If there were annual weather/trawl/dredge impacts however? Regrowth of a reef community could not occur. Its contribution to local fisheries would all but cease. 

Like oysters; to restore lost fisheries productions in an area where substrate is completely lost, the bottom must be enhanced with new substrate. 

Between 1994 and 2002 I knew of significant areas of tube worm colonies. Most of those I knew about in 20 fathoms were removed by trawl (as observed on radar) when summer flounder quotas were liberalized in the early 2000s. Trawl skippers know our seafloor unlike any other. They feel the tow/footrope going across whatever bottom they're towing. Those skippers call tube worms 'spaghetti mud' and have no love for them because they can lose their net if dense enough. These days a diver can get a lost net back, but that service sure isn't free. 

It's my inference from their radio discussions back then (cell phone now) and from my observations, that tube worms are not predictable like hardbottom habitat. 

Once you know where a hard substrate is - even in the days of LORAN - you could find that reef again and again. 

Seems like clay is best for tube worms but perhaps some textures of sand work too as I've even had productive tube worm colonies atop a shoal. 

Another area of tube worms, much closer to shore in 10 fathoms, were lost when an enormous number of squid were discovered spawning on them and soon trawled (also observed on radar while returning from fishing.) 

Other patches of tube worm, smaller, disappeared as well. I do not know why. 

Today I only know of one place I suspect tubeworms growing in a small colony. Large colonies back then were supremely fishable for sea bass. The colony I suspect today offers very little habitat production. 

Sadly, with my focus on understanding hardbottoms, I never filmed a tube worm colony. Sea bass and summer flounder treated them exactly as a hardbottom reef. When I volunteered my boat to take scientists to a tube worm colony in the mid-2000s, visibility was zero on bottom for video equipment. We were able to gather tube worm specimens via ponar grab, however. (A small, stainless steel hand held scientific bottom sampler I had aboard.)  

I will also note here that I see sea bass/lobster trap/pot gear being shown to cause habitat damage. 

I have fished around bass pots at times my entire 46 year career. Where I have filmed reef growth completely removed in moments across the span of a single tow by trawl; and once observed rock become almost polished by a hydraulic clam dredge - I have never observed habitat loss owed to traps. 

There are delicate low-lying natural reefs that have had traps on them continuously as far back as the 1950s - they still offer highly productive reef habitat. 

If 75 years of fishing didn't damage a habitat? ..what concern should regulators have..

Even recreational gear can sometimes dislodge a sea whip. It's ludicrous to think trap damage a concern. 

Though corals are biological powerhouses where habitat is concerned, our temperate corals have never been deemed 'important' or considered 'reef building corals' as found nearer the equator. NOAA has a huge department dedicated to coral protection and research. They will have nothing to do with temperate corals. Believe me, I've tried. 

Mid-Atlantic temperate corals grow on a hard substrate. They feed both on plankton, and, I believe, by zooxanthellae/sunlight photosynthesis. 

They are as tropical corals where fish habitat is concerned ..they're just not big - didn't form land in Darwin's time & have, thus far, not been thought worthy of concern or study. 

I believe adherence to the nonsensical unimportance of "non reef building corals" dates to Charles Darwin's 1842 tome, "Structure and Distribution of Coral Reefs"-- an entire book about his multi-year coral reef study aboard the Beagle. With shell and coral fossils commonly found atop mountains, Darwin sought to show corals 'grew' land. (Plate tectonics were almost a century and a half off yet.) His book mentions fish but once because those fish eat corals and excrete sand. 

Our 'non reef building' temperate corals are certainly of great biological importance; especially if trying to understand, monitor, regulate or improve reef fish, squid and lobster production & harvest. 

In fact, if menhaden, scallops & surfclams are removed from combined commercial landings values, the math reveals temperate reefs are an important bioeconomic driver of the Mid-Atlantic's marine commercial fisheries. 

There can be no question for recreational partyboat fishers such as myself. We have to have reef, reef spawning production & be allowed regulatory access to extract that production to make a living. Yet, to my knowledge, no investigative science or historical research has ever been conducted on temperate reef's fisheries productions. 

In my 46 years of recreational partyboat fishing from Ocean City, MD I've rarely fished anything but reef - even for summer flounder which are not currently shown in the literature to be reef associated. 

Nearshore habitat loss here, at least in my time, has been about summer flounder and surfclamming. Though impacts I've observed have regrown, it sure wasn't fast. We have no 'protected' reef by regulation - not even any recognized reef. Should there be a change in these fisheries, whether by market force, regulatory change, permit structure or fish movement, trawl and dredge habitat impacts could be severe in just a few days - even just a day

I've referenced 'historical habitat loss' several times. It's not just water quality; I'm also referring to ancient marsh remnants that form peat-like 'hardbottoms.' These areas support sessile growths including sea whip and star corals, yet can be crumbled in the hand. 

There were about 4.5 square miles of patchy sea whip meadows that were destroyed at the Bass Grounds some 8 to 9 miles off Ocean City, MD, by a large fleet of surfclam boats from the 1960s into the mid-1970s. Ancient peat bottoms were too soft to withstand the effort of a fleet of many-ton hydraulic dredges in the early surfclam fishery. By 1975 or so the area we still call the Bass Grounds--a large fishing ground of 4+ sq miles where "a sea of pot flags" and daily fleet of party/charter boats enjoyed commercial and recreational fishing success across generations--by the mid 70s that huge reef had become so diminished it's remnant natural corals were measurable in square yards. 

Sea bass and lobster landings were almost lost completely when that not-quite-rock substrate was ground back to sand and mud. 

After the area's surfclam bonanza, catching sea bass and lobster became all but impossible until early artificial reefs were built - an effort that continues to this day. 

Like marlin fishing, That 4.5 sq mile area cannot be restored to production simply by catch regulations alone. The substrate that created enormous fisheries productions of sea bass, lobster and summer flounder is simply gone. 

To restore this long lost reef complex we must site new substrates - and our tiny nonprofit is, if at a snail's pace. 

I've had old salts from Massachusetts to Virginia describe similar areas of sea floor habitat loss. 

Can we expect to restore squirrels where a long ago hardwood forest is now a soybean field? 

Regulation has been overdone. If we are to make further, even substantial, improvements to reef dependent species, we must find out what habitats are missing and put them back. 

It's not hard. Restoration can be accomplished in most places by simply by rolling rocks off a barge. New substrate will result, given time, in a healthy reef ecology.

I fished all of the 1980s. I saw what unregulated fishing had wrought. I believe fisheries management's greatest victories in the Mid-Atlantic Ocean lie ahead  ..but first these habitats must be discovered, protected & repaired. We must understand the importance of temperate reef as it relates to historical declines in fish populations, lost bioeconomic stability; and how to, one day, create economic improvement in fisheries and better our region's ocean health. 

Respectfully,

Monty

Capt. Monty Hawkins

mhawkins@morningstarfishing.com

Comment on MAFMC's Essential Fish Habitat Amendment.  

Capt. Monty Hawkins - 2/8/26. 

I support Alternative 2 for Essential Fish Habitat (EFH). 

Habitat is far more askew in the Mid-Atlantic Ocean than currently recognized. In my view, EFH has been diminished for every species under fed/state management in the Mid-Atlantic. 

The wording of the Magnuson-Stevens Act seems succinct to me. 

5) The term “conservation and management” refers to all of the rules, regulations, conditions, methods, and other measures (A) which are required to rebuild, restore, or maintain, and which are useful in rebuilding, restoring, or maintaining, any fishery resource and the marine environment; 

I believe broadening NOAA's knowledge of marine habitat is key if fisheries management is to create truly successful marine fisheries restorations, especially asking "where were fish & lobster caught in the early years after WWII? Are those places still productive today?" ..those questions will make today's 'maintain populations' style of management finally consider marine habitat. 

Management must consider locations that once offered decades of sustainable fisheries extractions--yet today do not. If an area produced catch a half-century ago or more, yet no longer does; habitat should be investigated for cause and, if altered, repaired to restore historical fisheries productions. 

Most simply? Find out what's missing and put it back. 

In this comment I hope to show how habitat loss has reshaped the spatial distribution and abundance of marlin, black sea bass, summer flounder, squid, lobster & our soft coral, sea whip, off the DelMarVa coast.

I'll also write about what I've called 'blackwater' (resuspended algae/organic detritus) since well before the nearly month long event after Hurricane Sandy in October 2012. 

Along DelMarVa we have a unique situation in the decline of ocean water quality, simply: Our part of the ocean turned green.

Had the decline of our region's 'deep blue sea now turned green' happened over the course of a few years, there would be public outrage and intense scientific scrutiny. Instead, a multi-generational shift happened. It took 60 years for the Mid-Atlantic's shelf waters to turn from blue to green. 

It continues to worsen. This loss of water quality is surely a result of losing a keystone filtration specialist, the oyster. While countless oyster restoration efforts are underway—and have begun to gain ground since restorationists shifted from shell to rock—NOAA should recognize water-quality decline is not confined to our major estuaries. Mid-Atlantic shelf waters are badly degraded. 

I have numerous reports from Ocean City's pelagic fishers that, at times, pea green water extends even beyond our canyons. 

In today's often visually impenetrable green water, billfish can no longer feed on nearshore grounds where they were once caught in number just 5 to 20 miles offshore well into the 1970s.

Apex pelagics cannot be restored to their historic inshore grounds off DelMarVa by managing harvest alone - regulating marlin catch cannot repair water quality. 

Highly migratory species fishery management is clearly working where water quality remains suitable. Records have been set by Ocean City anglers in recent years for most marlin caught in a day and most marlin caught in a year. It's clear that abundance is not the issue -- habitat is. 

Today marlin are rarely caught at the 30 fathom line & never at the 10 fathom line on shoals where they were historically caught in the 1940s/50s & 60s. That failure is because of the Mid-Atlantic's marine water quality decline. 

An angler from Florida can, for instance, target sailfish exactly where their father and grandfather did. DelMarVa anglers, however, must run at least 30 or 40 miles further offshore to have any chance of success for billfish. Here the Gulf Stream - among the world's most powerful currents - creates a slow gyre where it dams an already weakened southerly Labrador Current at Cape Hatteras. That's why ocean waters off DelMarVa do not flush as well as most. Large estuarine outflows of DE & Ches Bays are not swept away as is generally the case when a river or estuary's flow meets an ocean. 

This slow flushing of building algae and nutrient laden waters creates need of restoring this incredibly broad but broken benthic/pelagic coupling where estuarine oyster's vital filtration has been lost. For nearly 60 years the ecosystem service of biofiltration that once ensured a 'deep blue sea' in Mid-Atlantic nearshore waters has been lost. 

Now we have nutrient enriched estuarine outflows allowing algae to flourish making the Mid-Atlantic Ocean greener and greener. Without oyster restoration pushed to higher levels--industrial levels--anglers are unlikely to witness a return of nearshore marlin in coming decades. 

Apex pelagics have been pushed offshore because they cannot see to feed as they once did. Corals, however, are being pushed inshore because light cannot penetrate our sea water as deeply as it once did. 

As Chesapeake Bay lost its subaquatic vegetation when algae darkened its waters, so too will we see a continued worsening of viable sea whip habitat unless oyster restorations are ramped up. 

The time for discovering 'how to' restore oysters is past. 

There has been success. 

Now their filtering of an entire estuary must be restored. With oysters today at approximately 2% their historical number, there is much work to be done. 

As a recreational for-hire fisherman specializing in reef fisheries I have come to believe the habitable zone for our only temperate soft coral, sea whip--some of which are known to host zooxanthellae which, like tropical corals, convert sunlight into nutritition via photosynthate production--has contracted inshore owing, I believe, to the Mid-Atlantic's diminished water quality.  

My own video work plus diver reports & video had large colonies of sea whip even to 140 feet into the early 2000s. I believe 115 feet is about as deep as I've seen them thick in recent years - with fewer animals at 120. I should think in a pristine Mid-Atlantic depths of much closer to 150/160ft would have been likely. In tropical seas there exists a supremely well documented photosynthetic relationship between coral and their resident zooxanthellae at depths to beyond 200ft. 

I have monitored artificial reefs off DelMarVa for several decades and have never seen northern star coral or sea whip inside, beneath or beside a structure where sunlight cannot strike it. 

Like their tropical cousins, I believe our temperate corals too need sufficient water quality for light penetration. 

Why would sea whip only grow where there is light if not photosythatic/zooxanthellae symbiants - turning sunlight into food like plants. 

While my light penetration investigation is still a work in progress, what I'm learning leads me to believe sea whip can no longer survive at depths over 120 feet. 

But current science doesn't agree. I've long held our reefs and corals are poorly studied. Here and elsewhere sea whip is shown to only grow to 66 feet. 

https://www.dnr.sc.gov/swap/supplemental/marine/colorfulsawhip2015.pdf