Suit: Endangered sturgeon accidentally being caught off Long Island

Commercial fishing boats in the waters off New York and New Jersey are hauling in Atlantic sturgeon along with their intended catch and driving the highly endangered fish toward extinction, according to the environmental group Riverkeeper.

Riverkeeper, based in Ossining, and its affiliate Delaware Riverkeeper Network have filed suit in federal court against the Department of Environmental Conservation, charging the agency has failed to protect sturgeon from getting snared in gill nets and trawls. A significant number are perishing along Long Island’s South Shore, the suit says.

The complaint, filed last month, argues the DEC is violating the Endangered Species Act by allowing "incidental takes" — which can mean injury as well as death — of Atlantic sturgeon and suggests the state could strengthen restrictions on the use of these nets. The group filed companion lawsuits in Delaware and New Jersey.

The DEC wrote in a statement that it "does not comment on pending litigation."

Bonnie Brady, executive director of the Long Island Commercial Fishing Association, said the fisheries in New York are already "highly regulated on where we can go, where we can’t" and when, in order to reduce unwanted fish and other marine creatures in their catch.

Ancient but highly endangered

Sturgeon are ancient marine creatures that have been prowling the planet’s waters from the South China Sea to the Mediterranean to the North Atlantic for 200 million years. By the early 1900s overfishing for sturgeon meat and roe had devastated populations almost everywhere, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration; of 27 sturgeon species worldwide, 23 are endangered. That includes those that inhabit the shores off Long Island.   

Atlantic sturgeon hatch in freshwater rivers from Canada to Florida and make their way to saltwater bays and estuaries as they near adulthood. A few years later they migrate back to the their natal rivers to spawn. Unlike salmon, the females don’t die after spawning but will make the same trip every two to three years over their life span, which can be up to 60 years in the northern reaches of their home range.

Although a moratorium was placed on Atlantic sturgeon fishing in 1998 and the species was granted protection under the Endangered Species Act in 2012, their numbers have not recovered. A 2014 NOAA study estimated there were just 466 adult Atlantic sturgeon in the Hudson River; a new DEC population study is underway but figures are not available, according to the agency.

But Brady believes the sturgeon surveys used to justify the endangered species listing may be inaccurate. Those surveys have used trawls rather than gill nets, Brady said, but gill nets are a more reliable way to catch and count sturgeon. The data "scientists have used in past," she said, "has not used the types of surveys that are more apt to catch that fish." She suspects that a gill net survey "would have far greater numbers than are presently shown." 

She argued that fisheries in New York are carefully managed by the mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council, which has authority over federal waters from Long Island down to Virginia. "I think the entire process for that species is being addressed through the Council process right now — it’s not being ignored," Brady said.

Dead sturgeon wash up on Long Island shores

Two types of fishing gear are especially deadly to sturgeon, according to the Riverkeeper complaint: Gill nets, which are set up like a fence on the seafloor and snag on fishes’ gills when they struggle to escape; and otter trawls, which are dragged behind a boat. 

Though some sturgeon hauled up in commercial fishing nets are tossed back alive, "the delayed effects of stress and injuries may occur for weeks after the initial capture," and probably result in additional deaths not reflected in the data, according to a 2015 study by Keith Dunton, an associate professor at Monmouth University and an expert on sturgeon conservation, and colleagues.

The Riverkeeper complaint cites Dunton’s research, which notes that in New York "a majority of incidents occur in known aggregation areas" — places where sturgeon gather — "along western Long Island."

"Direct observations of deceased juvenile Atlantic Sturgeon are frequently made on beaches close to the Rockaway aggregation region during the spring and fall and adjacent to coastal areas that experience high-frequency bottom trawling," Dunton and his colleagues wrote.

Sturgeon bycatch in New York waters is most common during their seasonal migrations, from April to June and October to November, according to Dunton’s study. 

The predictable patterns of migration mean seasonal restrictions in some areas could reduce sturgeon bycatch and mortality, Victoria Leung, staff attorney for Riverkeeper, told Newsday. 

"There is enough science to know where and when sturgeon are likely to be in these areas," Leung said. "And the state has the power and authority to put in restrictions — so they can tell fisherman not to use certain equipment in certain areas at certain times."